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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1bbee6a --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #63935 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63935) diff --git a/old/63935-0.txt b/old/63935-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index e76897e..0000000 --- a/old/63935-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11833 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Counterplot, by Hope Mirrlees - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: The Counterplot - - -Author: Hope Mirrlees - - - -Release Date: December 1, 2020 [eBook #63935] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COUNTERPLOT*** - - -E-text prepared by Mary Glenn Krause, Charlene Taylor, University of -Chicago, Shawna Milam, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team -(https://www.pgdp.net) - - - -Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this - file which includes the original illustration. - See 63935-h.htm or 63935-h.zip: - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/63935/63935-h/63935-h.htm) - or - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/63935/63935-h.zip) - - - Some characters might not display properly in this UTF-8 - text file (e.g., empty squares). If so, the reader should - consult the html version noted above. - - - - - -THE COUNTERPLOT - - -Miss Hope Mirrlees, when she wrote _Madeleine_, several years ago, was -recognised to be one of the most promising of the younger school of women -novelists. - -_The Counterplot_ is a study of the literary temperament. Teresa Lane, -watching the slow movement of life manifesting itself in the changing -inter-relations of her family, is teased by the complexity of the -spectacle, and comes to realise that her mind will never know peace till, -by transposing the problem into art, she has reduced it to its permanent -essential factors. So, from the texture of the words, the emotions, the -interactions of the life going on around her she weaves a play, the -setting of which is a Spanish convent in the fourteenth century, and this -play performs for her the function that Freud ascribes to dreams, for -by it she is enabled to express subconscious desires, to vent repressed -irritation, to say things that she is too proud and civilised ever to -have said in any other way. This brief summary can give but little idea -of the charm of style, the subtlety of characterisation, and the powerful -intelligence which Miss Hope Mirrlees reveals. The play itself is a most -brilliant, imaginative _tour de force_! - - - - -THE COUNTERPLOT - -by - -HOPE MIRRLEES - -Author of “Madeleine: One of Love’s Jansenists” - - - “Every supposed restoration of the past is a creation of the - future, and if the past which it is sought to restore is a - dream, a thing but imperfectly known, so much the better.” - - MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO. - - -[Illustration] - - - - - - -London: 48 Pall Mall -W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. -Glasgow Melbourne Auckland - -Copyright - -First Impression, December, 1923 -Second ” February, 1924 -Third ” April, 1924 - -Manufactured in Great Britain - - - - -TO JANE HARRISON - -Μάλιστα δέ τ’ ἔκλυον αὐτοί - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -1 - -Plasencia was a square, medium-sized house of red brick, built some sixty -years ago, in those days when architects knew a great deal about comfort, -but cared so little about line that every house they designed, however -spacious, was uncompromisingly a “villa.” Viewed from the front, it was -substantial and home-like, and suggested, even in the height of summer, -a “merry Christmas” and fire-light glinting off the leaves of holly; -from the back, however, it had a look of instability, of somehow being -not firmly rooted in the earth—a cumbersome Ark, awkwardly perched for a -moment on Ararat, before plunging with its painted wooden crew into the -flood, and sailing off to some fantastic port. - -It is possible that this effect was not wholly due to the indifferent -draughtsmanship of the Victorian architect, for there is a hint of the -sea in a delicate and boundless view, and the back of Plasencia lay open -to the Eastern counties. - -Even the shadowy reticulation of a West-country valley, the spring bloom -upon fields and woods, and red-brick villas that glorifies the tameness -of Kent, are but poor things in comparison with the Eastern counties in -September: yellow stripes of mustard, jade stripes of cabbage, stripes of -old rose which is the earth, a suggestion of pattern given by the heaps -of manure, and the innumerable shocks of corn, an ardent gravity given by -the red-brown of wheat stubble, such as the red-brown sails of a fishing -boat give to the milky-blue of a summer sea; here and there a patch of -green tarpaulin, and groups of thatched corn-ricks—shadowy, abstract, -golden, and yet, withal, homely edifices, like the cottages of those -villages of Paradise whose smoke Herrick used to see in the distance. -An agricultural country has this advantage over heaths and commons and -pastoral land that the seasons walk across it _visibly_. - - * * * * * - -On a particular afternoon in September, about three years ago, Teresa -Lane sat in a deck-chair gazing at this view. She was a pallid, -long-limbed young woman of twenty-eight, and her dark, closely-cropped -hair emphasised her resemblance to that lad who, whether he be unfurling -a map of Toledo, or assisting at the mysterious obsequies of the Conde de -Orgas, is continually appearing in the pictures of El Greco. - -As she gazed, she thought of the Spanish adjective _pintado_, painted, -which the Spaniards use for anything that is bright and lovely—flowers, -views; and certainly this view was _pintado_, even in the English sense, -in that it looked like a fresco painted on a vast white wall, motionless -and enchanted against the restless, vibrating foreground. Winds from the -Ural mountains, winds from the Atlantic celebrated Walpurgis-night on -the lawn of Plasencia; and, on such occasions, to look through the riven -garden, the swaying flowers and grasses, the tossing birch saplings, -at the tranced fields of the view was to experience the same æsthetic -emotion as when one looks at the picture of a great painter. - -But the back of Plasencia had another glory—its superb herbaceous border, -which, waving banners of the same hues, only brighter, marched boldly -into the view, and became one with it. Now in September it was stiffened -by annuals: dahlias, astors, snapdragon, sunflowers; Californian poppies -whose whiteness—at any rate in the red poppyland of East Anglia—always -seems exotic, miraculous, suggesting the paradoxical chemical action -of the Blood of the Lamb. There were also great clumps of violas, with -petals of so faint a shade of blue or yellow that every line of their -black tracery stood out clear and distinct, and which might have been the -handiwork of some delicate-minded and deft-fingered old maid, expressing -her dreams and heart’s ease in a Cathedral city a hundred years ago. As -to herbaceous things proper, there was St. John’s wort, catmint, borrage, -sage; their stalks grown so long and thick, their blossoms so big and -brave, that old Gerard would have been hard put to see in them his -familiars—the herbs that, like guardian angels, drew down from the stars -the virtue for the homely offices of easing the plough-boy’s toothache, -the beldame’s ague. - -A great lawn spread between the border and the house; it was still very -threadbare owing to the patriotic pasturage that, during the last years -of the War, it had afforded to half a dozen sheep, but it was darned in -so many places by the rich, dark silk of clover leaves as almost to be -turned into a new fabric. - -Well, then, the view and border lay simmering in the late sunshine. A -horse was dragging a plough against the sky-line, and here and there thin -streams of smoke were rising from heaps of smouldering weeds. In the -nearer fields, Teresa could discern small, moving objects of a dazzling -whiteness—white leghorns gleaning the stubble; and from time to time -there reached her the noise of a distant shot, heralding a supper of -roast hare or partridge in some secluded farm-house. Then, like a Danish -vessel bound for pillage in Mercia, white, swift, compact, a flock of -wood pigeons would flash through the air to alight in a far away field -and rifle the corn. - -But so _pintado_ was the view, so under the notion of art, that these -movements across its surface gave one an æsthetic shock such as one -would experience before a mechanical device introduced into a painting, -and, at the same time, thrilled the imagination, as if the door in a -picture should suddenly open, or silver strains proceed from the painted -shepherd’s pipe. - -Teresa could hardly be said to take a pleasure in the view and its -flowery foreground—indeed, like all lovely and complicated things, -they teased her exceedingly; because the infinite variety which made -up their whole defied expression. Until the invention of some machine, -she was thinking, shows to literature what are its natural limits (as -the camera and cinema have shown to painting) by expressing, in some -unknown medium, say a spring wood _in toto_—appearance, smells, noises, -associations—which will far outstrip in exact representation the combined -qualities of Mozart, Spencer, Corot, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and yet remain -dead and flat and vulgar,—so long shall we be teased by the importunities -of detail and forget that such things as spring woods are best expressed -lightly, delicately, in a little song, thus: - - The grove are all a pale, frail mist, - The new year sucks the sun; - Of all the kisses that we kissed - Now which shall be the one? - -As she murmured the lines below her breath, two children came running -down the grass path that divided the herbaceous border—Anna and Jasper -Sinclair, the grandchildren of the house. - -Teresa watched their progress, critically, through half-closed lids. -Yes, children are the right _fauna_ for a garden—they turn it at once -into a world that is miniature and Japanese. But perhaps a kitten -prowling among flower-beds is better still—it is so amusing to watch -man’s decorous arrangement of nature turning, under the gambols of the -sinister little creature, into something primitive and tropical—bush, -or jungle, or whatever they call it in Brazil and places; but Anna was -getting too big. - -Human beings too! Worse than the view, because more restless and more -complicated, yet insisting on being dealt with; even Shelley could not -keep out of his garden his somewhat Della Cruscan Lady. - -The children came running up to her. - -“You don’t know what _we’ve_ found, what _we’ve_ found, what _we’ve_ -found!” “Let _me_ say! a _dead_ hare, and we’ve buried him and....” “And -I’ve found a new fern; I’ve got ten and a half kinds now and I ought to -get a Girl Guide’s badge for them, and the Doña _promised_ me some more -blotting-paper, but....” - -Teresa stroked Jasper’s sticky little hand and listened indulgently to -their chatter. Then they caught sight of Mrs. Lane coming out of the -house, and rushed at her, shouting, “Doña! Doña!” - -The Spaniards deal in a cavalier way with symbolism; for instance, they -put together from the markets, and streets, and balconies of Andalusia -a very human type of female loveliness; next, they express this type -with uncompromising realism in painted wooden figures which they set up -in churches, saying, “This is not Pepa, or Ana, or Carmen. Oh, no! It -isn’t a woman at all: it’s a mysterious abstract doctrine of the Church -called the Immaculate Conception.” They then proceed to fall physically -in love with this abstract doctrine—serenading it with lyrics, organising -pageants in its honour, running their swords through those who deny its -truth, storming the Vatican for its acceptance. - -Hence, for those who are acquainted with Spain, it is hard to look on -Spanish concrete things with a perfectly steady eye—they are apt to -become transparent without losing their solidity. - -However this may be, Mrs. Lane (the Doña, as her friends and family -called her), standing there smiling and monumental, with the children -clinging to her skirts, seemed to Teresa a symbol—of what she was not -quite sure. Maternity? No, not exactly; but it was something connected -with maternity. - -The children, having said their say, made for the harbour of their -own little town—to wit, the nursery—where, over buns, and honey, and -chocolate cake, they would tell their traveller’s tales; and the Doña -bore down slowly upon Teresa and sank heavily into a basket chair. She -raised her _lorgnette_ and gazed at her daughter critically. - -“Teresa,” she said, in her slow, rather guttural voice, “why do you so -love that old skirt? But I warn you, it is going to the very next jumble -sale of Mrs. Moore.” - -Teresa smiled quite amicably. - -“Why can’t you let Concha’s elegance do for us both?” she asked. - -So toneless and muted was Teresa’s voice that it was generally impossible -to deduce from it, as also from her rather weary impassive face, of what -emotion her remarks were the expression. - -“Rubbish! There is no reason why I shouldn’t have _two_ elegant -daughters,” retorted the Doña, wondering the while why exactly Teresa -was jealous of Concha. “It _must_ be a man; but who?” she asked herself. -Aloud she said, “I wonder why tea is so late. By the way, I told you, -didn’t I, that Arnold is coming for the week-end and bringing Guy? And -some young cousin of Guy’s—I think he said his name was Dundas.” - -“I know—Rory Dundas. Guy often talks about him. He’s a soldier, so he’ll -probably be even more tiresome than Guy.” - -Oho! How, exactly, was this to be interpreted? - -“Why, Teresa, a nice young officer, with beautiful blue eyes like Guy -perhaps, only not slouching like Cambridge men, and you think that he -will be _tiresome_!” - -Again Teresa smiled amicably, and wished for the thousandth time that -her mother would sometimes stop being ironical—or, at any rate, that her -irony had a different flavour. - -“And so Guy is tiresome too, is he?” - -Teresa laughed. “No one shows more that they think so than you, Doña.” - -“Oh! but I think _all_ Englishmen tiresome.” - -Then the butler and parlour-maid appeared with tea; and a few minutes -later Concha, the other daughter, strolled up, her arm round the waist of -a small, elderly lady. - -Concha was a very beautiful girl of twenty-two. She was tall, and built -delicately on a generous scale; her hair was that variety of auburn -which, when found among women of the Latin races, never fails to give a -thrill of unexpectedness, and a whiff of romance—hinting at old old rapes -by Normans and Danes. As one looked at her one realised what a beautiful -creature the Doña must once have been. - -The elderly lady was governess _emerita_ of the Lanes. They had grown -so attached to her that she had stayed on as “odd woman”—arranging the -flowers, superintending the servants, going up to London at the sales -to shop for the family. They called her “Jollypot,” because “jolly” was -the adjective with which she qualified anything beautiful, kindly, -picturesque, or quaint; “pot” was added as the essence of the æsthetic -aspect of “jolliness,” typified in the activities of Arts and Crafts and -Artificers’ Guilds—indeed she always, and never more than to-day, looked -as if she had been dressed by one of these institutions; on her head -was a hat of purple and green straw with a Paisley scarf twisted round -the crown, round her shoulders was another scarf—handwoven, gray and -purple—on her torso was an orange jumper into which were inserted squares -of canvas wool-work done by a Belgian refugee with leanings to Cubism; -and beads,—enormous, painted wooden ones. Once Harry Sinclair (the father -of Anna and Jasper) had exploded a silence with the question, “Why is -Jollypot like the Old Lady of Leeds? Because she’s ... er ... er ... -INFESTED WITH BEADS!!!” - -While on this subject let me add that it was characteristic of her -relationship with her former pupils that they called her Jollypot to her -face, and that she had never taken the trouble to find out why; that the -great adventure of her life had been her conversion to Catholicism—a -Catholicism, however, which retained a tinge of Anglicanism: to wit, a -great deal of vague enthusiasm for “dear, lovely St. Francis of Assisi,” -combined with a neglect of the crude and truly Catholic cult of that most -potent of “medicine-men”—St. Anthony of Padua; and that taste for Dante -studies so characteristic of middle-aged Anglican spinsters. Indeed, -she was remarkably indiscriminating in her tastes, and loved equally -Shakespeare, Dante, Mrs. Browning, the Psalms, Anne Thackeray, and W. J. -Locke; but from time to time she surprised one by the poetry and truth of -her observations. - -The Doña, holding in mid-air a finger biscuit soaked in chocolate, -smiled and blinked a welcome; but her eyes flashed to her brain the -irritated message, “If only the jumper were purple, or even green! And -those beads—does she sleep in them?” - -Partly from a Latin woman’s exaggerated sense of the ridiculous -possibilities in raiment, partly from an Andalusian _Schaden-freude_, -ever since she had known Jollypot she had tried to persuade her that a -devout Catholic should dress mainly in black; but Jollypot would flush -with indignation and cry, “Oh! Mrs. Lane, how _can_ you? When God has -given us all these _jolly_ colours! Just look at your own garden! I -remember a dear old lady when I was a girl who used to say she didn’t -see why we should say grace for _food_ because that was a necessity and -God was _bound_ to give it to us, but that we should say it for the -_luxuries_—flowers and colours—that it was so good and _fatherly_ of Him -to think of.” Which silly, fanciful Protestantism would put the Doña into -a frenzy of irritation. - -But Jollypot—secure in her knowledge of her own consideration of the -Sesame and Lilies of the field—had, as usual, a pleasant sense of being -prettily dressed, and, quite unaware that she offended, she sat down to -her tea with a little sigh of innocent pleasure. Concha, after having -hugged the unresponsive Doña, and affectionately inquired after Teresa’s -headache, wearily examined the contents of the tea-table, and having -taken a small piece of bread and butter, muttered that she wished Rendall -would cut it thinner. - -“And what have you been doing this afternoon?” asked the Doña. - -“At the Moore’s,” answered Concha, a little sulkily. - -“But how very kind of you! That poor Mrs. Moore must have been quite -touched ... did I hear that Eben was home on leave?” and the Doña -scrutinised her with lazy amusement; Teresa, also, looked at her. - -“Oh, yes, he’s back,” said Concha, lightly, but blushing crimson all the -same. She loathed being teased. “How incredibly Victorian and Spanish it -all is!” she thought. - -She yawned, then poured some tea and cream into a saucer, added two lumps -of sugar, and put it down on the lawn for the refreshment of ’Snice, the -dachshund. - -“And how was Eben?” asked the Doña. - -“Oh, he was in _great_ form—really _extraordinarily_ funny about getting -drunk at Gibraltar,” drawled Concha; she always drawled when she was -angry, embarrassed, or “feeling grand.” - -“Oh! the English always get drunk at Gibraltar—it wasn’t at all original -of Eben.” - -“I suppose not,” and again Concha yawned. - -“And I suppose Mrs. Moore said, ‘Ebenebeneben! Prenny guard!’ which meant -that one of the Sunday school children was coming up the path and he must -be careful what he said.” - -Concha gurgled with laughter—pleasantly, like a child being tickled—at -the Doña’s mimicry; and the atmosphere cleared. - -Teresa remembered Guy Cust’s once saying that conversation among members -of one family was a most uncomfortable thing. When one asks questions it -is not for information (one knows the answers already) but to annoy. It -is, he had said, as if four or five men, stranded for years on a desert -island with a pack of cards, had got into the habit of playing poker -all day long, and that, though the game has lost all savour and all -possibilities of surprise; for each knowing so well the “play” of the -other, no bluff ever succeeds, and however impassive their opponent’s -features, they can each immediately, by the sixth sense of intimacy, -distinguish the smell of a “full house,” or a “straight,” from that of a -“pair.” - -For instance, the Doña and Teresa knew quite well where Concha had been -that afternoon; and Concha had known that they would know and pretend -that they did not, so she had arrived irritated in advance, and the Doña -and Teresa had watched her approach, maliciously amused in advance. - -“Well, and was Mrs. Moore hinting again that she would like to have her -Women’s Institute in my garden?” asked the Doña. - -“Oh, yes, and she wants Teresa to go down to the Institute one night and -talk to them about Seville, but I was quite firm and said I was sure -nothing would induce her.” - -“You were wrong,” said Teresa, in an even voice, “I should like to talk -to them about Seville.” - -“Good Lord!” muttered Concha. - -“Give them a description of a bull-fight, Teresa. It would amuse me to -watch the face of Mrs. Moore and the Vicar,” said the Doña. - -Teresa and Concha laughed, and Jollypot shuddered, muttering, “Those poor -horses!” - -The Doña looked at her severely. “Well, Jollypot and what about the poor -foxes and hares in England?” - -This amœbæan dirge was one often chanted by the Doña and Jollypot. - -“Oh! look at the birds’ orchard ... all red with haws. Poor little -fellows! They’ll have a good harvest,” cried Jollypot, pointing to the -double hedge of hawthorn that led to the garage, and evidently glad to -turn from man’s massacring of beasts to God’s catering for birds. - -“Seville!” said Concha meditatively; and a silence fell upon them -while the word went rummaging among the memories of the mother and her -daughters. - -Tittering with one’s friends behind one’s _reja_, while Mr. Lane down -below (though then only twenty-three, already stout and intensely -prosaic), self-consciously sang a Spanish serenade with an execrable -English accent; gipsy girls hawking lottery tickets in the _Sierpes_; -eating ices in the _Pasaje del Oriente_; the ladies in mantillas laughing -shrilly at the queer English hats and clumsy shoes; the wall of the -Alcazar patined with jessamine; long noisy evenings (rather like poems by -Campoamor), of cards and acrostics and flirtation; roses growing round -orange trees; exquisite horsemanship; snub-nosed, ill-shaven men looking -with laughing eyes under one’s hat, and crying, _Viva tu madre!_ Dark, -winding, high-walled streets, called after Pedro the Cruel’s Jewish -concubines; one’s milk and vegetables brought by donkeys, stepping as -delicately as Queen Guinevere’s mule. One by one the candles of the -_Tenebrario_ extinguished to the moan of the _miserere_, till only the -waxen thirteenth remains burning; goats, dozens of wooden Virgins in -stiff brocade, every one of them _sin pecado concebida_, city of goats -and Virgins ... yes, that’s it—city of goats and Virgins. - -“By the way,” said Concha nonchalantly, “I’ve asked Eben to lunch on -Sunday.” - -The Doña bowed ironically and Concha blushed, and calling ’Snice got up -and moved majestically towards the house. - -“Arnold’s coming on Saturday, Jollypot,” said the Doña, triumphantly. - -“The dear fellow! That _is_ jolly,” said Jollypot; then sharply drew in -her breath, as if suddenly remembering something, and, with a worried -expression, hurried away. - -The thing she had suddenly remembered was that the billiard-table was at -that moment strewn with rose petals drying upon blotting-paper, and that -Arnold would be furious if they were not removed before his arrival. - -The Doña, by means of a quizzical look at Teresa, commented upon the last -quarter of an hour, but Teresa’s expression was not responsive. - -“Well,” said the Doña, regretfully hoisting her bulk from her -basket-chair, “I must go and catch Rudge before he goes home and tell him -to keep the sweet corn for Saturday—Arnold’s so fond of it. And there’s -the border to be—oh, your father and his golf!” - -The irritated tone of this exclamation ended on the last word in a note -of scorn. - - * * * * * - -Teresa sat on alone by the deserted tea-table, idly watching the Doña -standing by the border, in earnest talk with the gardener. - -How comely and distinguished, and how beautifully modelled the Doña -looked in the westering light! No one could model like late sunshine—she -had seen it filtering through the leaves of a little wood and turning -the smooth, gray trunk of a beech into an exquisite clay torso, not yet -quite dry, fresh from the plastic thumb, faithfully maintaining the -delusion that, though itself a pliable substance, the frame over which -it was stretched was rigid and bony. The Doña and beech trees, however, -were beautiful, even without the evening light; but she had also seen the -portion of a rain-pipe that juts out at right angles from the wall before -taking its long and graceless descent—she had seen the evening light turn -its dirty yellow into creamy flesh-tints, its contour into the bent knee -of a young Diana. - -Forces that made things _look_ beautiful were certainly part of a -“Merciful Dispensation.” Memory was one of these forces. How exquisite, -probably, life at Plasencia would look some day! - -It would take a lot of mellowing, she thought, with a little smile. -Again it was a question of the swarm of tiny details: beauty, evidently, -requiring their elimination. - -But, for instance, the interplay of emotions at tea that afternoon—was -it woven from the tiny brittle threads of unimportant details, or was it -made of a more resisting stuff? - -Why was the Doña equally irritated that she, Teresa, ignored young men, -and that Concha ran after them—like a tabby-cat in perpetual season? -No—that was disgusting, coarse, unkind. There was nothing ugly about -Concha’s abundant youth: she was merely normal—following the laws of -life, no more disgusting than a ripe apple ready to drop. - -There came into Teresa’s head the beginning of one of Cervantes’s -_Novelas Exemplares_, which tells of the impulse that drives young men, -although they may love their parents dearly, to break away from their -home and wander across the world, “... nor can meagre fare and poor -lodging cause them to miss the abundance of their father’s house; nor -does travelling on foot weary them, nor cold torment them, nor heat -exhaust them.” - -And, added Teresa, rich in the wisdom of a myriad songs and stories, they -are probably fully aware, ere they shut behind them the door of their -home, that some day they, too, will discover that freedom is nought but a -lonely wind, howling for the past. - -_Il n’y a pour l’homme que trois événements: naître, vivre et mourir_ -... yes, but to realise that, personally, emotionally—to feel _as one_ -the three events—three simultaneous things making one thing that is -perpetually repeated, three notes in a chord—and the chord Life itself -... an agonising sense of speed ... yes, the old simile of the rushing -river that carries one—where? But every life, or group of lives, is deaf -to the chord, stands safe on the bank of the river, till a definite -significant moment, which, looked back upon, seems to have announced its -arrival with an actual noise—a knocking, or a rumbling. To Teresa, it -seemed that that moment for them all at Plasencia had been Pepa’s death, -two years ago—_that_ had been what had plunged them into the river. -Before, all of them (the Doña too) had lived in Eternity. Now, when -Teresa awoke in the night, the minutes dripped, one by one, on to the -same nerve, till the agony became almost unbearable; and it was the agony -of listening to a tale which the narrator cannot gabble fast enough, -because you know the end beforehand—yes, something which is at once a -ball all tightly rolled up that you hold in your hand and a ball which -you are slowly unwinding. - -She looked towards the house—the old ark that had so long stood high and -dry; now, it seemed to her, the water had reached the windows of the -lowest story—soon it would be afloat, carrying them all ... no, not her -father. He, she was sure, was still—would always be—outside of Time. - -But Concha—Concha was there as much as she herself. - -Why did she mind in Concha the same intellectual insincerities and -pretensions, the same airs and graces, that she had loved in Pepa? - -She smiled tenderly as she remembered how once at school she had opened -Pepa’s _Oxford Book of English Verse_ at the fly-leaf and found on it, in -a “leggy,” unfledged hand, the following inscription: “To Josepha Lane, -from her father,” and underneath, an extract from Cicero’s famous period -in praise of letters—_et haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem -oblectant_, and so on. (That term Pepa’s form had been reading the _Pro -Archia_.) - -Teresa had gone to her and asked her what it meant. - -“Dad would _never_ have written that—besides, it’s in your writing.” - -Pepa had blushed, and then laughed, and said, “Well, you see I wanted -Ursula Noble” (Ursula Noble’s father was a celebrated Hellenist) “to -think that _we_ had a brainy father too!” - -Then, how bustling and important she had been when, shorty after her -_début_, she had become engaged to Harry Sinclair—a brilliant Trinity -Don, much older than herself, and already an eminent Mendelian—how -quickly and superficially she had taken over all his views—liberalism, -atheism, eugenics! - -Oh, yes, there had been much that had been irritating in Pepa; but, -though Teresa had recognised it mentally, she had never felt it in her -nerves. - -She was suddenly seized with a craving for Pepa’s presence—dear, -innocent, complacent Pepa, so lovely, so loving, with her fantastic, yet, -somehow or other, cheering plans for one’s pleasure or well-being—plans -that she galvanised with her own generous vitality. - -Yes, Pepa had certainly been very happy during her six or seven -years of married life at Cambridge: cultured undergraduates pouring -into tea on Sundays, and Pepa taking them as seriously as they took -themselves, laughing delightedly at the latest epigram that was going -the round of Trinity and Kings’—“Dogs are sentimental,” or “Shaw is so -Edwardian”—trolling _Spanish Ladies_ or the _Morning Dew_ in chorus round -the piano; footing it on the lawn—undergraduates, Newnham students, -Cambridge matrons, young dons, eyeglasses and prominent teeth glittering -in the sun, either a slightly patronising smile glued on the face, or an -expression of strenuous endeavour—to the favourite melodies of Charles -II.; suffrage meetings without end, lectures on English literature, -practising glees in the Choral Society; busy making cardboard armour for -the Greek play, or bicycling off to Grantchester, or taking Anna to her -dancing class, or off to Boots to change her novels—a Galsworthy for -herself, a Phillips Oppenheim for Harry. - -It had always seemed to Teresa that this life, in spite of its suffrage -and girl’s clubs and “culture,” was both callous and frivolous in -comparison with the tremendous adventures that were going on, all round, -in laboratories and studies and College rooms: at any moment Professor —— -might be able to resolve an atom, and blow up the whole of Cambridge in -the process; and, in little plots of ground, flowers whose _habitat_ was -Peru or the Himalayas, were springing up with—say, purple pollen instead -of golden, and that meant that a new species had been born; or else, -Mr. —— of Christ’s, or John’s, or Caius, would suddenly feel the blood -rush to his head as a blinding light was thrown on the verbal nouns of -classical Arabic by a French article he had just been reading on the use -of diminutives in the harems of Morocco. - -Anyhow, whether callous or frivolous or both, it had given Pepa seven -happy years. - -What Harry Sinclair’s contribution—apart from the necessary -background—had been to that happiness it would, perhaps, be difficult -to determine. There could be no one in the world less sympathetic to -the small emotional things—so important in married life—than Harry: -homesickness, imagined slights when one was tired, fears that one’s son -aged three summers might some twenty years ahead fall in love with little -Angela Webb, and there was consumption in the family—he viewed them with -the impatience of a young lady before the furniture of a drawing-room -that she wants to clear for a dance, the dance, in his case, being the -sweeps, pirouettes, glides, of endless clever and abstract talk through -the clear, wide spaces of an intellectual universe. - -However, emotionally, Pepa had never quite grown up, so perhaps she had -missed nothing. - -All the same, when he had broken down at her death, there had been -something touching and magnificent in his fine pity—not for himself, but -for Pepa, so ruthlessly, foolishly, struck down in the hey-day of her -splendid vigour. “It’s devilish! devilish!” he had sobbed. - -During the last days of her life, Pepa had talked to Teresa a good deal -about Anna and Jasper. “Make them want to be nice people,” she had said; -and Teresa remembered that, even through her misery, she had wondered -that Pepa had not used a favourite Cambridge _cliché_ and said, “Make -them want to be _splendid people_”; perhaps it was she, Teresa, who was -undeveloped emotionally. - -She had tried hard to do what Pepa had asked her; but in these latter -days, when the outlines of the virtues have lost their firmness, it is -difficult to give children that concrete sense of Goodness that had made -the Victorian mothers’ simple homilies, in after years, glow in the -memory of their children with the radiance of a Platonic Myth. - -Well, anyhow, she must go up to the nursery now. - - * * * * * - -She walked into the house. In the hall, as if in illustration of -her views on memory, the light was falling on, and beautifying a -medley of objects, incongruous as the contents of one’s dreams: the -engraving of Frith’s _Margate_ that had hung in Mr. Lane’s nursery in -the old Kensington house where he had been born; a large red and blue -india-rubber ball dropt by Anna or Jasper; the old Triana pottery, -running in a frieze round the walls, among which an occasional -Hispano-Mauresque plate yielded up to the touch of the sun the store -of fire hidden in its lustre; a heap of dusty calling-cards in a flat -dish on the table; Arnold’s old Rugby blazer, hanging, a brave patch of -colour, among the sombre greatcoats.... Through the half-opened door of -the drawing-room came a scent of roses; and through the green baize door -that led to the kitchen the strange, lewd sounds of servants making merry -over their tea. Probably Gladys, the under-housemaid, was reading cups. - -Teresa mounted the wide, easy stairs, and, passing through another green -baize door, entered the children’s quarters, and then the nursery itself. -There, tea finished and cleared away, a feeling of vague dissatisfaction -had fallen on the two children. Every minute bed-time was drawing nearer, -and anxious eyes kept turning towards the door; would any one come before -it was too late, and Jasper was already plunging and “being silly” in the -bath, while Anna, clad in a pink flannel dressing-gown, her hair in two -tight little plaits, was putting tidy her books and toys, and—so as to -perform the daily good deed enjoined by the Girl Guides—Jasper’s too? - -Their craving for the society of “grown-ups” was as touching and -inexplicable, it seemed to Teresa, as that of dogs. She had noticed -that they longed for it most between tea and bed-time—it was as if they -needed, then, a _viaticum_ against the tedium of going to bed and the -terrors of the night. Nor, she had noticed, was Nanny, dearly though they -loved her, capable of giving this _viaticum_, nor could any man provide -it: it had to be given by a grandmother, or mother, or aunt. - -So Teresa’s advent was very warmly welcomed; and sitting down in the -rocking-chair she tried to perform the difficult task of amusing Anna and -Jasper at the same time. For between Anna of nine and Jasper of six there -was very little in common. - -Jasper, like the boy Froissart, “never yet had tired of children’s games -as they are played before the age of twelve”: these meaningless hidings, -and springings, and booings, and bouncings of balls. His mind, too, was -all little leaps, and springs, and squeals, and queer little instincts -running riot, with a tendency to baby _cabotinage_. “Don’t be silly, -Jasper!” “Don’t show off!” were continually being said to him. - -Anna’s mind, on the other hand, was completely occupied with solid -problems and sensible interests, namely, “I hope that silly Meg will -marry Mr. Brook (she was reading Louisa Alcott’s _Little Women_). I -expect the balls were damp to-day, as they wouldn’t bounce ... it would -be nice if I could get a badge for tennis next year. _Ut_ with the -subjunctive ... no, no, the accusative and infinitive ... wait a minute -... I’m not quite sure. Every square with a stamp in it—every _single_ -square. I wonder why grown-ups don’t spend _all_ their money on stamps. -I wonder if Daddy remembered to keep those Argentine ones for me ... -little pictures of a man that looks like George—George—George IV., I -think—anyhow, the one that didn’t wear a wig ... the Argentine ones are -always like that ... that’ll make six Argentine stamps. Brazil ones are -pretty, too ... what’s the capital of Brazil again?” - -Teresa had found that a story—one that combined realism with the -marvellous—was the best focus for these divergent interests; so she -started a story. - -The sun was setting; and the border and view, painted on the glass of the -nursery windows, grew dim. Some one in the garden whistled the air of: - - You made me love you: - I didn’t want to do it, - I didn’t want to do it. - -Nanny sat with her sewing, listening too, a pleased smile on her face, -the expression of a vague and complex feeling of satisfaction: for one -thing, it was all so suitable and what she had been used to in her other -places—kind auntie telling the children a story after tea; then there was -a sense of “moral uplift” as, doubtless, the story was allegorical; poor -Mrs. Sinclair in heaven, too—she would be glad if she could see what a -good aunt they had—then there was also a genuine interest in the actual -story; for no nurse without a sense of narrative and the marvellous is -fit for her post. - -“Bed-time, I’m afraid. Kiss kind Auntie and say, ‘Thank you, Auntie, for -the nice story.’” - -Outside, the cowman was leading the cows home to the byre across the -lawn. It was a good thing that Rudge, the head gardener, was safe in -his cottage, eating his tea. Far away an express flashed across the -view, whistling like a nightjar, giving a sudden whiff of London that -evaporated as swiftly as its smoke. - -“But we don’t call her ‘Auntie’; we call her ‘Teresa,’” said Anna for the -thousandth time. - -“Now, Anna dear, don’t be rude. Up you get, Jasper. I’m afraid, miss, it -really is bed-time ... and they were late last night too.” - - -2 - -Teresa dressed and went down to the drawing-room, to find her father and -Jollypot already there and chatting amicably. - -“The place was full of salmon at four and sixpence a pound, and he said, -‘You’ll never get rid of that!’ and the fishmonger said, ‘Won’t I? It’ll -go like winking,’ and the other chap said, ‘Who’ll buy it these hard -times?’ and he said, ‘The miners, of course.’” - -Dick Lane was a stockily-built man of middle height, with a round, -rubicund face. A Frenchman had once described him as, _Le type accompli -du farmer-gentleman_. - -He was, however, a Londoner, born and bred, as his fathers had been -before him for many a generation; but, as they had always had enough -and to spare for beef and mutton and bacon, the heather of Wales and -the pannage of the New Forest had helped to build their bones; besides, -it was not so very long ago that cits could go a-maying without being -late for ’Change; and then, there is the Cockney’s dream of catching, -one day before he dies, the _piscis rarus_—a Thames trout—a dream which, -though it never be realised, maketh him to lie down in green pastures and -leadeth him beside the still waters. - -As to Dick, he liked cricket, and the smell of manure and of freshly-cut -hay, he liked pigs, and he liked wide, quiet vistas; but he liked them -as a background to his prosaic and quietly regulated activities—much -as a golfer, though mainly occupied with the progress of the game, -subconsciously is not indifferent to the springy turf aromatic with thyme -and scabious, nor to the pungent breezes from the sea, nor to the sweep -of the downs. - -He and Teresa exchanged friendly nods, and she, sinking into a chair, -began to contemplate him—much as Blake may have contemplated the tiger, -when he wondered: - - What mysterious hand and eye - Framed its awful symmetry. - -There he sat, pink from his bath, pleasantly tired after his two rounds -of golf, expounding to Jollypot his views on the threatened strike—the -heir to all the ages. - -For his body and soul were knit from strange old fragments: sack; fear of -the plague; terror of the stars; a vision of the Virgin Queen borne, like -a relic in a casket, on the shoulders of fantastically-dressed gentlemen; -Walsingham; sailor’s tales of Spanish ladies; a very English association -between the august word of Liberty and the homely monosyllable Wilkes; -dynasties tottering to the tune of “Lillybolero”; Faith, Hope, and -Charity, stimulated by cries of, “No Popery,” “Lavender, Sweet Lavender,” -“Pity the poor prisoners of the Fleet”; Dr. Donne thundering Redemption -at Paul’s Cross, the lawn at his wrist curiously edged with a bracelet -of burnished hair; Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, Pride, Lechery, -Robin Hood, throbbing in ballads, or else, alive and kicking and bravely -dressed beyond one’s dreams, floating in barges down the Thames; -Death—grinning in stone from crevices of the churches, dancing in -churchyards with bishops and kings and courtesans, forming the burden of -a hundred songs, and at last, one day, catching one oneself; Death—but -every death cancelled by a birth. - -Without all this he would not have been sitting there, saying, “The -English working man is at bottom a sensible chap, and if they would only -appeal to his common sense it would be all right.” - -Then the gong sounded. Dick looked at his watch and remarked, quite -good-humouredly, “I wonder how many times your mother has been in time -for dinner during the thirty years we have been married.” - -At last the door opened, and the Doña came in with Concha. - -“I have just been saying I wonder how many times you have been in time -for dinner since we were married.” - -The Doña ignored this remark, and busied herself in straightening -Teresa’s fichu. - -Then they went in to dinner. - -“By the way, Anna,” said Dick, looking across at the Doña and sucking -the soup off his moustache, “I was playing golf with Crofts, and he says -there’s going to be a wonderful new rose at the show this year—terra -cotta coloured. It’s a Lyons one; he says it’s been got by a new way of -hybridising. We must ask Harry about it.” - -“Harry wouldn’t know—he knows nothing about gardening,” said the Doña -scornfully. - -“Not know? Why, he’ll know _all_ about it. That fellow Worthington—you -know who I mean, the chap that went on that commission to India—well, -he’s a knowledgeable sort of chap, and he asked me the other day at the -Club if Dr. Sinclair of Cambridge wasn’t a son-in-law of mine, and he -said that he’d been making the most wonderful discoveries lately.” - -“What’s the use of discoveries—of Harry’s, at any rate? They do no one -any good,” said the Doña sullenly. - -“Oh, I don’t know; there’s no knowing what these things mayn’t lead -to—they may teach us to improve the human stock and all sorts of things”; -and then Dick applied himself to the more interesting subject of his -fried sole, oblivious, in spite of years of experience, that his remark -had horrified his wife by its impious heresy. - -However, her only comment was an ironical smile. - -“To learn to know people through flowers—what a lovely idea,” mused -Jollypot, who was too absent-minded to be tactful. “I think it is his -work among flowers that makes Dr. Sinclair so—so——” - -“So like a flower himself, eh?” grinned Dick, with a sudden vision of his -large, massive, overbearing son-in-law. - -“I’m sure flowers really irritate Harry horribly,” said Concha. “They’ve -probably got the Oxford manner, or are not Old Liberals, or something.” - -“You are quite right, Concha. Both flowers and children irritate him,” -said the Doña bitterly. - -“Oh, I don’t know,” said Dick, with indifferent good humour. “By the -way,” he added, “I’ve asked a young fellow called Munroe down for the -week-end. He’s representing a South African sugar firm we have to do with -... it’ll be all right, won’t it?” - -“Well, Arnold’s written to say he’s coming, and he doesn’t like -strangers, you know,” said the Doña. - -“Well, I’m blessed ... has it come to this ...” he spluttered, roused -completely out of his habitual good humour. - -“No, it hasn’t,” said Concha soothingly, and laid a hand on his. - -“Well, all the same, it’s ...” he growled; and then subsided, slightly -appeased. - -The Doña, quite unmoved, continued placidly eating her sole. Then she -remarked, “And where is your friend to sleep, may I ask? Arnold is -bringing down Guy and a cousin of his. When the children are here you -_know_ how little room we have.” - -“I suppose one of them—Arnold, as far as that goes—can sleep at Rudge’s,” -said Dick sulkily. - -“Oh, I can sleep in Dad’s dressing-room, if it comes to that,” said -Teresa. - -“Or I can,” said Concha. - -“Oh, no, you’re so much more dependent on your own dressing-table and -your own things,” said Teresa; and Concha blushed. Innocent remarks of -Teresa’s had a way of making her blush; but she was a fighter. - -“What’s the good Colonial like?” she asked, her voice not quite -natural—and thinking the while, “I _will_ ask if I choose! It’s -absolutely unbearable how self-conscious they’re making me—it’s like -servants.” - -“The Colonial—what Colonial? Oh, Monroe! He’s a Scot really, but he’s -been out there some years; done jolly well, too. He’s a gallant fellow, -too—V.C. in the war.” - -“Oh, no-o-o!” drawled Concha, “_how_ amusing! V.C.’s are so exotic—it’s -like seeing a fox suddenly in a wood——” and then she blushed again, for -she realised that this remark was not original, but Guy Cust’s, and that -Teresa was looking at her. - -“What’s he like?” she went on hurriedly. - -“Oh, I don’t know ... he’s a great big chap,” and then he added -cryptically, “pretty Scotch, I should say.” - - * * * * * - -When dinner was over, the Doña went up to the nursery to apologise, in -case the children were still awake, for not having been up before to say -good-night. She found they were asleep, however, but Nanny was sitting in -the day-nursery darning a jersey of Jasper’s; so, partly to avoid having -had the trouble of climbing the stairs for nothing, partly because she -had been seeking for some time the occasion for a private chat, she sank -into the rocking-chair—looking extremely distinguished in her black lace -mantilla and velvet gown. - -Her brown eyes, with the quizzical droop of the lids that Teresa had -inherited, fixed Nanny in a disconcerting Spanish stare. - -How thankful she was that _she_ did not have to wear a gown of black -serge fastening down her chest with buttons, and a starched white cap. - -“I think the children have had a happy summer,” she said. - -“Oh, yes, madam. There’s nowhere like Plasencia—and no one like Granny -and Auntie!” - -There was a definite matter upon which the Doña wanted information; but -it required delicate handling. She was on the point of approaching it by -asking if the children were not very lonely at Cambridge, but realising -that this would be a reflection upon Nanny she immediately abandoned -it—no one could deal more cavalierly, when she chose, with the feelings -of others than the Doña; but she never _inadvertently_ hurt a fly. - -So what she said was, “I suppose Dr. Sinclair is always very busy?” - -“Oh, yes—always working away at his stocks and his chickens,” said Nanny -placidly, holding a small hole up to the light. “He’s managed to get that -bit of ground behind the garden, and he’s planted it with nothing but -stocks. He lets Anna help him with the chickens. She’s becoming quite a -little companion to her Daddy.” - -“That is delightful,” purred the Doña; then, after a pause, “He must be -terribly lonely, poor man.” - -“Oh, yes, he frets a lot, I’m sure; but, of course, gentlemen don’t show -it so much.” - -“Ah?” and there was a note of suppressed eagerness in the interjection. - -Nanny began to feel uncomfortable. - -As dogs who live much with human beings develop an agonising -sensitiveness, so servants are apt to develop from an intimacy with their -masters a delicacy and refinement of feeling often much greater than that -of the masters. - -At the bottom of her heart, she resented Dr. Sinclair’s indifference to -his children—at any rate, his indifference to Jasper—for Anna, who was -a remarkably intelligent little girl, he rather liked. But with regard -to Jasper, he had once remarked to a crony at dinner that, with the -exception of the late Lord —— (naming a famous man of science), his son -was the greatest bore he had ever met; which remark had been repeated by -the parlour-maid in a garbled version to the indignant Nanny. - -Then, in decent mourning, a broken heart as well as a crape band must be -worn on the sleeve; Dr. Sinclair’s sleeve was innocent of either, and -it could not be denied that within eight months of his wife’s death his -voice was as loud and cheerful, his eyes as bright, as ever before. - -Yes; but it was quite another matter to be pumped, even by “Granny,” or -to admit to any one but her own most secret heart that “Daddy” could, -under any circumstances, behave otherwise than as the model of all the -nursery virtues. - -There was a short silence; then the Doña said, “Yes, poor man! It must be -very dull for him. But I suppose he is beginning to see his friends?” - -“Oh, yes, madam, the College gentlemen sometimes come to talk over -his work with him,” and Nanny pursed up her lips, and accelerated the -speed with which she was threading her needle through her warp. “It’s a -blessing, I’m sure,” she added, “that he has his work to take off his -thoughts sometimes.” - -“Yes, indeed!”; then, after a slight pause, “What about that Miss—what -was her name—the lady professor—Miss Fyles-Smith? Is she still working -with Dr. Sinclair?” - -“I couldn’t say, madam, I’m sure. She was very kind, taking the children -on the river, and that—_when Dr. Sinclair was away_.” - -The slight emphasis on the temporal clause did more credit to Nanny’s -heart than her head—considering that the rapier she was parrying was -wielded by the Doña; for it caused the Doña to say to herself, “Aha! she -knows what I mean, does she? There must be something in it then.” - -However, this was loyal, faithful service, and the Doña had an innate -respect for the first-rate; but, though honouring Nanny, she did not feel -in the least ashamed of herself. - -She changed the subject, and sat on, for a while, chatting on safe, -innocent topics. - - -3 - -The Doña considered that no sand-dune, Turkish divan, bank whereon -the wild thyme blows, or Patriarch’s bosom, could rival her own -fragrant-sheeted, box-spring-mattressed, eiderdowned bed; therefore she -went there early and lay there late. So on leaving the nursery, although -it was barely half-past nine, she went straight to bed, and there she -was soon established, her face smeared with Crême Simon, with a Spanish -novel lying open on the quilt. But the comfort of beds, as of all other -things—even though they be ponderable and made of wood and iron—is -subject to the capricious tyranny of dreams; and for some time, in spite -of the skill of Mr. Heal, the Doña’s bed had not been entirely compact of -roses. - -When, an hour or so later, Dick climbed into his bed, she said, “I -suppose you realise that Harry has forgotten all about my Pepa?” - -“Oh, nonsense, Anna! Poor chap, you don’t expect him to be always -whimpering, do you? I tell you, the English aren’t demonstrative.” - -“Nor are the Spaniards, but they have a great deal of heart all the same; -and Harry has absolutely none—I don’t believe he has any soul either.” - -“So much the better then; he can’t be damned.” - -This was an unusually acute and spiteful remark—for Dick. The Doña -had never confided to him her vicarious terrors touching the apostasy -of Pepa, who had not had her children baptised, and, during her last -illness, had refused to the end the ministrations of Holy Church; but -one cannot pass many years in close physical intimacy with another -person without getting an inkling, though it be only subconsciously, of -that person’s secret thoughts; and though Dick had never consciously -registered his knowledge of the Doña’s, the above remark had been made -with intention to wound. - -His irritation at her criticism of Harry was caused by a sense of -personal guilt: twice, perhaps, during the last year had his own thoughts -dwelt spontaneously upon Pepa—certainly not oftener. - -With a sigh of relief he put out the light, shook himself into a -comfortable position, and then got into the shadowy yacht in which -every night he sailed towards his dreams. With that tenderness of males -(which deserves the attention of the Freudians) towards any vehicle—be -it horse, camel, motor-car, or ship—he knew and loved every detail of -her equipment; and in the improvements which, from time to time, he made -in her he observed a rigid realism—never, for instance, making them -unless they were justified by the actual state of his bank-book. The only -concession that he made to pure fancy was that there was no wife and -children to be considered in making his budget. On the strength of an -unexpected dividend, he had recently had her fitted out with a wireless -installation. The only guests were his life-long friend, Hugh Mallam, and -a pretty, though shadowy and somewhat Protean, young woman. - -As to the Doña, she lay for hours staring with wide eyes at the darkness. -Why, oh why, had she married a Protestant? Just to annoy her too vigilant -aunts, for the sake of novelty and excitement she had, in spite of her -confessor, run off with a round-faced, unromantic young Englishman—really -unromantic, but for her with the glamour that always hangs round -hereditary enemies. Perhaps she deserved to be punished: but when they -had been little she had been so sure of her children—how could they ever -be anything but her own creatures, pliable to her touch? Even Arnold, -brought up a Protestant (he had been born before the Bull exacting that -all children of a mixed marriage should be Catholics), she had been -certain that, once his own master, he would come over. She smiled as she -remembered how he used to say when he was at school—as a joke—“Oh, yes, -I’m going to be the Pope, and I’ll have a special issue of stamps to be -used in the Vatican, then after a few days suppress ’em; so I’ll have a -corner in them!” And though he had _not_ come over to Rome, there was a -certain relaxing of tension as she thought of him; somehow or other, it -made it different his having been born before the Bull. But Pepa—that -was another thing: a member of the Catholic fold from her infancy ... -where could she be now but in that portion of Purgatory which is outside -the sphere of influence of prayers and masses, and which will one day -be known as Hell? Before her passed a series of realistic pictures of -those torments, imprinted on her imagination during _las semanas de los -ejerjicios espirituales_ of her girlhood. - -Could it be?... No, it was impossible.... Impossible? Pepa had died in -mortal sin ... she was there. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -1 - -Arnold Lane and Guy Cust had been great friends at Cambridge, in spite of -having been at different colleges, and having cultivated different poses. - -Guy, who was an Etonian, had gone in for intellectual and sartorial -foppishness, for despising feminine society, for quoting “Mr. Pope” and -“Mr. Gibbon,” and for frequenting unmarried dons. - -Arnold had been less exclusive—had painted the town a “greenery-yellow” -with discalceated Fabians, read papers on Masefield to the “Society of -Pagans,” and frequently played tennis at the women’s colleges; he had -also, rather shamefacedly, played a good deal of cricket and football. - -Then, at the end of their last year, came the War, and they had both gone -to the front. - -The trenches had turned Arnold into an ordinary and rather Philistine -young man. - -As to Guy—he had undergone what he called a conversion to the “amazing -beauty of modern life,” and, abandoning his idea of becoming a King’s -don and leading that peculiar existence which, like Balzac’s novel, is -a _recherche de l’Absolu_ in a Dutch interior, when the War was over he -had settled in London, where he tried to express in poetry what he called -“the modern mysticism”—that sense, made possible by wireless and cables, -of all the different doings of the world happening _simultaneously_: -London, music-halls, Broad Street, Proust writing, people picking -oranges in California, mysterious processes of growth or decay taking -place in the million trees of the myriad forests of the world, a Javanese -wife creeping in and stabbing her Dutch rival. One gets the sense a -little when at the end of _The Garden of Cyrus_ Sir Thomas Browne says: -“The huntsmen are up in America and they are already past their first -sleep in Persia.” Its finest expression, he said, was to be found in the -_Daily Mirror_. - -But early training and tastes are tenacious. We used to be taught that, -while we ought not to wish for the palm without the dust, we should, -nevertheless, keep Apollo’s bays immaculate; and, in spite of their -slang, anacoluthons, and lack of metre, Guy’s poems struck some people -(Teresa, for instance) as being not the bays but the aspidistras of -Apollo—dusted by the housemaid every morning. - -Towards five o’clock, the next day, their arrival was announced by ’Snice -excitably barking at the front door, and by Concha—well, the inarticulate -and loud noises of welcome with which Concha always greeted the return -of her father, brother, or friends, is also best described by the word -“barking.” - -“It’s a friendly gift; I’m sure no ‘true woman’ is without it,” thought -Teresa. - -Arnold had his father’s short, sturdy body and his mother’s handsome -head; Guy was small and slight, with large, widely-opened, china-blue -eyes and yellow hair; he was always exquisitely dressed; he talked in a -shrill voice, always at a tremendous rate. They were both twenty-seven -years old. - -As usual, they had tea out on the lawn; the Doña plying Arnold with -wistful questions, in the hopes of getting fresh material for that exact -picture of his life in London that she longed to possess, that, by its -help, she might, in imagination, dog his every step, hear each word he -uttered. - -Up in the morning, say at eight (she hoped his landlady saw that his -coffee was hot), then at his father’s office by nine, then ... but she -never would be able to grasp the sort of things men did in offices, then -luncheon—she hoped it was a good one (no one else had ever had any fears -of Arnold’s not always doing himself well), then ... hazy outlines and -details which she knew were all wrong, and, in spite of the many years -she had spent in England, ridiculously like the life of a young Spaniard -in her youth ... no, no, he would never begin his letters to young ladies -_ojos de mi corazon_ (eyes of my heart)—they would be more like this: -Dear ——? Fed up. Have you read? Cheerio! Amazing performance! Quite. -Allow me to remind you.... And then, perhaps, a Latin quotation to end -up. No, it was no use, she would never be able to understand it all. - -“A Scotch protégé of Dad’s is coming to-night,” said Concha; “he’ll -probably travel down with Rory Dundas—I wonder if they’ll get on ... oh, -Guy, I hadn’t noticed them before; what divine spats!” - -“Oh, Lord!” groaned Arnold, “it’s that chap Munroe, I suppose. Look here, -I don’t come down here so often, I think I might be left alone when I do, -Mother,” and he turned angrily to the Doña. It was only in moments of -irritation that he called her “mother.” - -“And I think so, too. I _told_ your father that you would not be pleased.” - -“Well, of course, it’s come to this, that I’ll give up coming home at -all,” and he savagely hacked himself a large slice of cake. - -A look of terror crept into the Doña’s eyes—her children vanishing -slowly, steadily, over the brow of a hill, while she stood rooted to the -ground, was one of her nightmares. - -Trying to keep the anger out of her voice, Teresa said, “The last time -you were here there were no visitors at all, and the time before it was -all your own friends.” - -“Quite. But that is no reason....” - -“Poor angel!” cried Concha, plumping down on his knee, “you’re like -Harry, who used to say that he’d call his house Yarrow that it might be -‘unvisited.’” - -Arnold grinned—the Boswellian possessive grin, automatically produced in -every Trinity man when a sally of Dr. Sinclair’s was quoted. - -“How I love family quarrels! By the way, where’s Mr. Lane?” said Guy. - -“Playing golf,” answered the Doña curtly. - -“The glorious life he leads! ‘The apples fall about his head!’ He does -lead an amazingly beautiful life.” - -“‘_Beautiful_,’ Guy?” and the Doña turned on him the look of pitying -wonder his remarks were apt to arouse in her. - -“Yes, successful, middle-aged business men,” cried Guy excitedly, -beginning to wave his hands up and down, “they’re the only happy people -... they’re like Keats’ Nightingale, ‘no hungry generations tread them -down, singing of....’” - -“I’m not so sure of that,” laughed Arnold. “We’re certainly hungry, and -we often trample on him—if that’s what it means,” and, getting up, he -yawned, stretched himself, and, seizing the Doña’s hand, said, “Come and -show me the garden.” - -The Doña flushed with pleasure, and they strolled off towards the border, -whither they were shortly followed by Concha. - -Teresa and Guy sat on by the tea-table. - -“I quite agree with you,” she said presently. “Dad’s life _is_ pleasant -to contemplate. Somehow, he belongs to this planet—he manages to be -happy.” - -“Yes, you see he doesn’t try to pretend that he belongs to a different -scheme of evolution from beasts and trees and things, and he doesn’t -dream. Do you think he ever thinks of his latter end?” and he gave a -little squeak of laughter. - -Teresa smiled absently, and for some seconds gazed in silence at the -view. Then she said, “Think of all the things happening everywhere -... but there are such gaps that we can’t feel the _process_—even in -ourselves; we can only register results and that isn’t living, and it’s -frightfully unæsthetic.” - -“But, my dear Teresa, that’s what _I’m_ always preaching!” cried Guy -indignantly. “It’s exactly this registering of results instead of living -through processes that is so frightful. In a poem you shouldn’t say, -‘Hullo! There’s a lesser celandine!’ all ready-made, you know; and then -start moralising about it: ‘In its unostentatious performance of its duty -it reminds me of a Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman that I once knew’—you know -the sort of thing. In your poem the lesser celandine should go through -the whole process of growth—and then it should wither and die.” - -“No, Guy; it can’t be done ... in music, perhaps, but that’s so vague.” - -Guy felt a sudden sinking in his stomach: had he not himself invented -a technique to do this very thing? He must find out at all costs what -Teresa thought of his poetry. - -“Don’t you think ...” he began nervously, “that modern poetry is getting -much nearer to—to—er—processes?” - -Teresa gave a little smile. So _that_ was what it was all leading up to? -Was there no one with whom she could discuss things simply and honestly -for their own sake? - -“Did you—er—ever by any chance read my poem on King’s Cross?” - -“Yes. It was very good.” - -She felt tempted to add, “It reminded me a little bit of Frith,” but she -refrained. It would be very unkind and really not true. - -Her praise, faint though it was, made Guy tingle all over with pleasure, -and he tumbled out, in one breath, “Well, you see, it’s really a sort -of trick (everything is). Grammar and logic must be thrown overboard, -and it’s not that it’s easier to write without them, it’s much -more difficult; Monsieur Jourdain was quite wrong in calling logic -_rébarbative_; as a matter of fact, it’s damnably easy and seductive—so’s -grammar; the Song of the Sirens was probably sung in faultless grammar -... and anyhow, it spoils everything. Now, just think of the most -ridiculous line in the Prelude: - - ... and negro ladies in white muslin gowns. - -Don’t you see it’s entirely the fault of the conjunction ‘and’? Try it -this way. Oranges, churches, cabriolets, negro ladies in white muslin -gowns.... It immediately becomes as significant and decorative as Manet’s -negro lady is a white muslin gown in the Louvre—the one offering a -bouquet to Olympia.” - -He paused, and looked at her a little sheepishly, a smile lurking in the -corner of his eyes. - -“You’re too ridiculous,” laughed Teresa, “and theories about literature, -you know, are rather dangerous, and allow me to point out that all the -things that ... well, that one perhaps regrets in poor Wordsworth, whom -you despise so much, that all these things are the result of his main -theory, namely, that everything is equally interesting and equally -poetic. While the other things—the incomparable things—happened _in -spite_ of his theories.” - -“Oh, yes ... trudging over the moors through the rain, and he’s sniffing -because he’s lost his handkerchief, and he’s thinking of tea—sent him by -that chap in India or China, what was his name? You know ... the friend -of Lamb’s—and of hot tea cakes.” - -Teresa gave her cool, superior smile. “Poor Guy! You’ve got a complex -about Wordsworth.” - -After a little pause, she went on, “Literature, I think, ought to -_transpose_ life ... turn it into a new thing. It has to come pushing up -through all the endless labyrinths of one’s mind—like catechumens in the -ancient Mysteries wandering through cave after cave of strange visions, -and coming out at the other end new men. I mean ... oh, it’s so difficult -to say what I mean ... but one looks at—say, that view, and the result is -that one writes—well, the love story of King Alfred, or ... a sonnet on a -sun-dial. I remember I once read a description by a psychologist of the -process that went on in the mind of a certain Italian dramatist: he would -be teased for months by some abstract philosophical idea and gradually -it would turn itself into, and be completely lost in an _action_—living -men and women doing things. It seems to me an extraordinarily beautiful -process—really creative.... Transubstantiation, that’s what it is really; -but the bad writers are like priests who haven’t proper Orders—they can -scream _hoc est corpus_ till they are hoarse, but nothing happens.” - -Guy had wriggled impatiently during this monologue; and now he said, in a -very small voice, “You ... you _do_ like my poetry, don’t you, Teresa?” - -She looked at him; of course, he deserved to be slapped for his egotism -and vanity, but his eager, babyish face was so ridiculous—like -Jasper’s—and when Jasper climbed on to the chest of drawers and shouted, -“Look at me, Teresa! _Teresa!_ Look at me!” as if he had achieved the -ascent of Mount Everest, she always feigned surprise and admiration. - -So, getting up, she said with a smile, “I think you’re an amazingly -brilliant creature, Guy—I do really. Now I must go.” - -He felt literally intoxicated with gratification. “I think you’re an -amazingly brilliant creature; _I think you’re an amazingly brilliant -creature; an amazingly brilliant creature_”—he sucked each word as if it -were a lollipop. - -Then, the way she affectionately humoured him—that was the way women -always treated geniuses: geniuses were apt to seem a trifle ridiculous; -probably the impression he made on people was somewhat similar to -Swinburne’s. - -He got up and tripped across the lawn to a clump of fuchsias. - -Yes; he had certainly been very brilliant with Teresa: _the song of the -sirens was, I am sure, in faultless grammar; the song of the sirens was, -I am sure, in faultless grammar; the song of the_ ... and how witty he -had been about the negro ladies! - -He really must read a paper on his own views on poetry—to an audience -mainly composed of women: _The cultivated have, without knowing it, -become the Philistines, and, scorning the rude yet lovely Saturnalia of -modern life, have refused an angel the hospitality of their fig-tree; -Tartuffe, his long, red nose pecksniffing—the day of the Puritans -is over; but for the sake of the Lady of Christ’s, let them enjoy -undisturbed their domestic paradise regained_; then all these subjects -locked up so long and now let loose by modern poetry ... yes, it would -go like this: _The harems have been thrown open, and, though as good -reactionaries we may deplore the fact, yet common humanity demands that -we should lend a helping hand to the pretty lost creatures in their -embroidered shoes_; then, about anacoluthons and so on; _surely one’s -sentences need not hold water if they hold the milk of Paradise_; oh, yes -... of course ... and he would end up by reading them a translation of -Pindar’s first Olympian Ode, ... Ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ ..., _and now, ladies -and gentlemen, which of you will dare to subscribe to Malherbe’s ‘ce -galimatias de Pindare’?_ - -Loud applause; rows of indulgent, admiring, cultured smiles—like the -Cambridge ladies when the giver of the Clark lectures makes a joke. - -“Guy! I have told you before, I will _not_ have you cracking the fuchsia -buds.” - -It was the Doña, calling out from the border where, deserted by Arnold -but joined by Dick, she was examining and commenting upon each blossom -separately, in the manner of La Bruyère’s amateur of tulips. - -“All right,” he called back in a small, weak voice, and went up to say, -“How d’ye do” to Dick. - -“Hullo, Guy! Been writing any more poetry?” - -This was Dick’s invariable greeting of him. - -Then he wandered off towards the house—a trifle crestfallen. “_I think -you’re an amazingly brilliant creature._” Yes; but wasn’t that begging -the question, the direct question he had asked whether she liked his -poetry? And one could be “an amazingly brilliant creature,” and, at the -same time, but an indifferent writer. Marie Bashkirsteff, for instance, -whose journal he had come upon in an attic at home, mouldering away -between a yellow-backed John Strange Winter and a _Who’s Who_ of the -nineties; no one could deny that socially she must have been extremely -brilliant, but, to him, it had seemed incredible that the world should -have failed to perceive that her “self-revelations” were to a large -extent faked, and her imagination a tenth-rate one. And now, both as -painter and writer, Time had shown her up, together with the other -_pompiers_ whose work had made such a brave show in the Salons of the -eighties, or had received such panegyrics in the _Mercure de France_. - -He felt sick as he thought of time, in fifteen years ... ten years -... having corroded the brilliant flakes of contemporary paint, faded -the arabesque of strange words and unexpected thoughts, and revealed -underneath the grains of pounce. - -Brilliant ... there was Oscar Wilde, of course ... but then, Oscar Wilde! - -He must find out what value exactly she attached to brilliancy. - - -2 - -It was past seven o’clock when Captain Roderick Dundas and Mr. David -Munroe drove up side by side to Plasencia. - -If they did not find much to say to each other, the fault was not Rory’s; -for he was a friendly creature, ready, as he put it, “to babble to any -one at his grandmother’s funeral.” - -In appearance he was rather like Guy, only much taller. They had both -inherited considerable prettiness from their respective mothers—“the -beautiful Miss Brabazons,” whose beauty and high spirits had made a great -stir at their _début_ in the eighties. - -As to David Munroe; he was a huge man of swarthy complexion, slow of -speech and of movement, and with large, rather melancholy brown eyes. - -“Hullo! We must be arriving. Isn’t it terrifying arriving at a new -house? It’s like going to parties when one was a child—‘are you sure -there’s a clean pocket handkerchief in your sporran, master Rory?’” - -David, turning a puzzled, rather suspicious, look upon him, said slowly, -“Are you Scotch?” - -“Lord, yes! I never get my ‘wills and shalls’ right, and I talk about -‘table-maids’ and all sorts of things. Here we are.” - -As they got into the hall, Guy and Arnold came out from the billiard-room. - -“Hullo, Rory!” said Guy, “you can’t have a bath before dinner because -_I’m_ going to have one.” - -“You’ll have to have it with Concha then, Guy,” said Arnold, “she’s -there regularly from seven till eight. I wish to God this house had more -bathrooms. Hullo! You’ve got a paper, Dundas—I want to see the latest -news about the Strike.” - -In the meanwhile, David Munroe stood in the background, looking -embarrassed and rather sulky, and Rendall, the butler, who secretly -deplored “Mr. Arnold’s” manners, said soothingly, “I’ll have your bag -taken up to your room, sir.” Whereupon Arnold looked up from the paper, -greeted him with sullen excuses, took him up to his room, and hurriedly -left him. - -Half an hour later David walked into the drawing-room, forlorn and -shy, in full evening dress. All the party, except Rory, were already -assembled, and he felt still more uncomfortable when in a flash he -realised that the other men were in dinner-jackets and black ties. - -“Ah! How are you, Munroe?” cried Dick heartily, “very pleased to see you. -So sorry I wasn’t there when you arrived—didn’t hear the car. Let me -introduce you to my wife.” - -“How do you do, Mr. Munroe. How clever of you to be dressed in time!” -said the Doña. There was always a note of irony in her voice, and it -was confirmed by the myopic contraction of her eyes; so David imagined, -quite erroneously, that she was “having a dig” at his tails and white -waistcoat. Nor did Dick improve matters by saying, “I say, Munroe, you -put us all to shame.” - -Then Rory came in, so easily, chattering and laughing as if he had known -them all his life—also in a dinner-jacket and a black tie; because, if -poor David had only known, Arnold had told him it was “just a family -party and he needn’t bother about tails.” - -The moment Rory had entered the room, Teresa had felt a sudden little -contraction of her throat, and had almost exclaimed aloud, “At last!” - -In their childhood, she and Pepa had dreamed of, and craved for, a man -doll, made of some supple material which would allow of its limbs being -bent according to their will, its face modelled and painted with a -realism unknown to the toy shops, a little fair moustache of real hair -that could be twisted, and real clothes that, of course, came off and on: -waistcoat, tie, collar, braces, and in a pocket a little gold watch. - -Their longing for this object had, at one time, become an obsession, and -had reached the point of their regarding living men entirely from the -point of view of whether, shrunk to twelve inches high, they would make a -good doll. - -So Teresa, who had so often deplored the childishness of her friends -and family, actually found herself gazing with gloating eyes at Rory -Dundas—the perfect man doll, found at last. - -Then they went into dinner. Guy took in Teresa; he was nervous, and more -talkative than usual, and she was unusually _distraite_. - -The room grew hot; every one seemed to be talking at once—screaming -about the _Fifth Form at St. Dominics_, or _Black Beauty_, or both. It -seemed that Arnold, when he was at Rugby, had exchanged one or both with -Concha for a Shakespeare, illustrated by photographs of leading actors -and actresses, and that he wanted them back. - -“Ah! he is thinking of his own children. Does it mean ... can he be going -to ...?” thought the Doña, delighted at the thought of the children, -frightened at the thought of the wife. - -“You must certainly give them back to Arnold, Concha; they’re his,” she -said firmly. - -“I like that! When he got such an extremely good bargain, too! He always -did in his deals with me.” - -“Anna has a _Black Beauty_, you might wangle it out of her by offering to -teach her carpentry or something ... something she could get a new badge -for in the Girl Guides.” - -“But it’s my own copy that I want.” - -And so on, what time Dick at the foot of the table shook like a jelly -with delighted laughter. - -Nothing makes parents—even detached ones like Dick—so happy as to see -their grown-up offspring behaving like children. - -“English hospitality is to _make_ you at home—a pistol at your head; look -at the poor Scot!” said Guy to Teresa. - -She had been trying to hear what Rory was saying to Concha about the -latest _Revue_, and, looking absently across at the silent, aloof David, -said vaguely, “Oh, yes of course; he’s Scotch, isn’t he?” - -“Inverness-shire, I should think. They’ve got a special accent there—not -Scotch, but a sort of genteel English. It’s rather frightening, like -suddenly coming upon a pure white tribe in the heart of Darkest Africa, -it....” - -Teresa heard no more, but yielded to the curious intoxication produced -by half a glass of claret, the din of voices, and the hot and brightly -lighted room. - -By some mysterious anomaly, its action was definitely Apolline, as -opposed to Dionysiac—suddenly lifting her from the Bacchic rout on the -stage to the marble throne of spectator. - -David Munroe, too, sitting silent by the Doña, happened to be feeling it -also. - -It seemed to him as if the oval mahogany table, on which the lights -glinted and the glasses rattled, and all the people sitting round it, -except himself, suddenly became an entity, which tore itself away from -surrounding phenomena like the launching of a ship, perhaps.... - -And at that very moment, “the dark Miss Lane” was saying to herself, -“It’s like the beginning of the _Symposium_, which seems at first clumsy -and long-winded, but by which the real thing—the Feast—is shifted -further and further, first to the near past, and then to years and years -ago, when they were all children, in the days when Agathon was still -in Athens and was making his sacrifice for his victory at the dramatic -contest; pushing the rôle of eyewitness through a descending scale of -remoteness—from Apollodorus to Phœnix, the son of Philip, from Phœnix -to ‘one Aristodemus, a Cydathenæan,’ till finally It—the Feast, small, -compact, and far-away—disentangles itself from Space and Time and floats -off to the stars, like a fire-balloon, while Apollodorus and his friend, -standing down there in the streets of Athens, stare up at it with dazzled -eyes.” - -“I say, Teresa, I was wondering ... I was thinking of writing an article -on ‘the men of the nineties’—do you think I should be justified in -calling Oscar Wilde ‘brilliant’?” - -Teresa, still bemused, gazed at Guy with puzzled eyes. Why on earth was -he looking so odd and self-conscious? - -“Brilliant? Yes; I suppose so. Why?” - -“Oh, I don’t know. I was just wondering....” - -But the Doña was getting up, and the men were left to their port. - - -3 - -Dick moved his chair beside David’s, and talked to him a little about the -prospects of sugar, and whether the Cuban planters were going to “down” -all the others; but, finding him unresponsive, he turned eagerly to -Arnold, saying, “I say! I lunched with Paget-Clark the other day, and he -told me this year’s Rugby fifteen will be one of the strongest we’ve ever -had. There’s a chap called Girdlestone who, they say, is a perfect genius -as half-back, and they’ve got a new beak who’s an international and a -marvellous coach. He says....” - -“Anyhow, their eleven was jolly good this year. They did extraordinary -well at Lord’s.” There was a slightly reproving note in Arnold’s voice, -as if it were sacrilege to talk about football when one might talk -about cricket. As a matter of fact, he was much more interested in -football, but he resented that his father should be able to give him any -information about Rugby. - -David smiled to himself as he thought of his own school—the Inverness -Academy. - -They had thought themselves very “genteel” with their school colours and -their Latin song beginning: - - Floreat Academia - Mater alma, mater pia. - -And indeed this gentility had been rubbed into them every morning on -their way to school by bare-footed laddies, who shouted after them: - - “Gentry puppies, ye’re no verra wice, - Ye eat your parritch wi’ bugs an’ lice.” - -“I doubt it wouldn’t seem very genteel to them,” he thought, without, -however, a trace of bitterness. - -They began to talk about the prospects of the Cambridge Boat, and Guy, -who prided himself on being able to talk knowledgeably on such matters, -eagerly joined in with aphorisms on “form.” - -“I say, Munroe, we’re nowhere in this show, are we?” said Rory, with a -friendly grin; then suddenly remembering that he had no legitimate cause -for assuming that David was not a University man (Rory prided himself on -his tact), he added hastily, “mere sodgers like you and me.” - -“I—I understand that the late Dr. Arnold sent his son to Oxford instead -of Cambridge, because—because at the latter University they didn’t study -Aristotle,” said David. - -He genuinely wanted to know about this, because recently his own -thoughts—by way of St. Thomas Aquinas—had been very much occupied with -Aristotle; but, being shy, his voice sounded aggressive. - -“Arnold _would_,” said the other Arnold coldly. - -“But—but Dr. Arnold was surely a great man, wasn’t he?” - -This time David’s voice was unmistakably timid. - -The others exchanged smiles. - -“Was he? That’s the question,” said Arnold. - -A few years ago Dick would have had no hesitation in exclaiming -indignantly, “A great man? I should just think he _was_!” Why, he had -called his only son after him, in spite of the Doña’s marked preference -for Maria-José. But recently his children had insisted on his reading -a small biography of Dr. Arnold that has since become a classic; very -unwillingly had he complied, as he had expected it to be like Carlyle’s -_Heroes and Hero-Worship_, which his sister, Joanna, had made him read in -his youth, and which he had secretly loathed; but he had been pleasantly -surprised, and had found himself at the end in complete agreement with -the writer. - -One of Dick’s virtues was an open mind. - -“Well, _I_ think old Arnold was quite right,” laughed Rory. “I’m sure -it’s most awfully important to read ... who did you say, Munroe? -Aristotle? Fancy not reading Aristotle! Rotten hole, Cambridge!” - -David grinned with such perfect good-nature at this chaff, that the -atmosphere perceptibly warmed in his favour. - -“Oh, well; I dare say there’s a good deal to be said for Oxford,” said -Dick magnanimously. - -“Oh, of course! Oxford shoes; Morris-Cowley cars, summing up the whole of -the Oxford movement ... namely, Cowley Fathers and the Preraphaelites!” -shrieked Guy. - -“Boar’s Hill!” screamed back Arnold. - -“Or the ‘Oxford’—the music-hall, you know,” suggested Rory. - -Then port wine began to come into its own. - -There is a certain type of story with but little plot and the crudest -psychology, to appreciate which—as in the case of the highest poetry—one -must have a love of _words_—for their own sake. - -“... and she thought the toast was ‘_Church_ and Birmingham’!” ended Guy -in a shrill scream. - -Rory and Arnold chuckled; Dick shook convulsively, and a little -sheepishly. After all, he _was_ much older than the others; besides, -he was afraid that his plate might slip down. He was very fond of his -plate, and much enjoyed clicking it into place, like the right piece in a -jig-saw puzzle; nevertheless, he would die of humiliation if it slipped -down before Arnold. - -Story followed story; with each one, the laughter growing louder and more -satyr-like (even David was smiling gravely); and it was on the best of -terms that the five entered the billiard-room, where, if there were men, -it was the custom at Plasencia to assemble after dinner. - -Arnold immediately organised a game of Snooker between Dick, Concha, -Rory, Guy, and himself; and the Doña, who was not completely free from a -social conscience, invited David to come and sit beside her on the sofa. - -What on earth was she going to talk to him about? It had been difficult -enough at dinner. Ah, of course! There was always the War; though there -were few subjects that bored her more. - -Though she was as ignorant as the Australian aborigines of the world’s -organisation and configuration, and of the natural and economic laws by -which it is governed, yet, like an exceptionally gifted parrot, she was -able to manipulate the current _clichés_, with considerable tact and -dexterity. - -For instance, on her annual visit to Wales, she would say, quite -correctly, “Snowdon is very clear to-day, isn’t it?” And that, though -she had not the slightest idea which of the many peaks on the horizon -happened to be called Snowdon. - -Nor did she ever talk about a _barrage_ in connection with motor-cars, or -a _carboretto_ in connection with guns; though, if asked to define these -two words, she would have been hard put. - -So David talked about the War, and she purred or sighed or smiled, as -the occasion required, and did not listen to a word. - -She noticed that Guy’s eyes kept wandering towards the chair where Teresa -sat motionless. Well, _he_, at any rate, had always preferred Teresa to -Concha. _Why was she jealous of Concha?_ It must be Concha’s beauty that -was the trouble.... Teresa, of course, was more distinguished looking, -but Concha was like a Seville _Purissima_—infinitely more beautiful. - -On and on went David’s voice; Concha, looking across from the -billiard-table, whispered to Arnold, “_No one_ talks so much really as a -‘strong, silent man.’” - -“Yes; it was a queer time—the War. Things happened then that people had -come to look upon as impossible—as old wives’ tales. But you’ll hardly -meet a fellow who has been through the War who hasn’t either himself had -some queer sort of experience, or else had a chum who has. It was a queer -time ... there—there ... were things....” - -“Be a sportsman—double the black!” shouted Rory from the billiard-table. - -Teresa, sitting silent in her corner, found herself muttering: - - Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs; - Old ditties sigh about their fathers’ graves; - Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave - Round every spot where trod Apollo’s foot; - Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit, - Where long ago a giant battle was.... - -Jollypot looked up eagerly from her crochet and said: - -“Oh, do tell us more about it, Mr. Munroe.” - -“Oh, well, it’s only that at times like these ... things are more ... -more naked, maybe,” and he laughed apologetically. Then he added, as if -to himself, “One sees the star.” - -Jollypot murmured something inaudible, and her eyes filled with -sympathetic tears; she was not certain of what he meant, but was sure it -was something beautiful and mystical. - -The Doña wondered if he had had shell-shock. - -But Teresa turned in her chair and scrutinised him. What exactly did he -mean? Not, she felt sure, what she herself would have meant, if she had -used these words, namely, that, during the five years of the War, one had -been continually, or so it seemed in retrospect, in that Apolline state -of intoxication into which she had fallen that very night at dinner; no, -not quite the same; for that had been purely Apolline, while during the -War it had been at once Apolline and Dionysiac, in that it was oneself -that one was looking at from these cool heights—oneself, a blind, deaf, -dusty maniac, whirling in a dance. - -And, if one liked, one might call such times “heliacal periods”—a time -when the star is visible ... whatever the star may be. - -But David, she felt sure, meant something concrete. - -“Now, then, Concha, cut that red and come back on the blue ... ve-e-ry -pree ... oh, hard luck!” - -“Now, then ... all eyes on Captain Dundas!... Captain Dundas pots the -black. Well, a very good game.” - -Whereupon the Snooker party broke up; the men wriggling into their -dinner-jackets, and Concha standing by the gramophone and swaying up and -down as she hummed the latest jazz tune. - -Guy came up to Teresa. “About Oscar Wilde—I do want to have a talk to you -about him. Do you think—well, brilliancy—it has a certain literary value, -don’t you think?” - -“Yes; I suppose so,” she answered absently; she was watching Concha and -Rory giggling by the gramophone. - -“Well, _I_ am going to bed,” said the Doña, and, kissing her hand to -Arnold, who was still knocking about the balls, she left the room, -followed by Jollypot. - -“Well, that was a very successful game,” said Dick. - -“What about another one? You’ve _got_ to play this time, Munroe.” - -“Yes, another game. I’ve never seen a game of Snooker over so quickly ... -owing to the amazing brilliance of our Captain Dundas,” cried Arnold. - -So they started another game, this time including David; and as it had -been decided that Rory was too good for parlour-billiards, he sat down on -the sofa beside Teresa. - -They began to talk—about the War, of course: all the old platitudes—the -“team-spirit,” for instance. “It’s football, you know, that makes us good -fighters. It’s about the only thing we learn at school—the team-spirit. -It teaches us to sacrifice stunts and showy play and that sort of thing -to the whole.” - -Then there was the Horse. “It’s extraordinary how chivalry and ... and -... decent behaviour ... and everything should be taught us by that old -creature with his funny, long face—but it’s true all the same. It’s only -because we use horses so little in fighting now that ‘frightfulness’ has -begun.” - -Teresa felt disappointed; but, after all, what had she expected? - -“But it was a funny time—the old War. All these tunes—rag-times and -Violet Lorraine’s songs—hearing them first at the Coliseum or Murray’s, -and then on one’s gramophone in the trenches ... it gave one a feeling -... I don’t know!” and he broke off with a laugh. - -“I know! Tunes ... it is very queer,” murmured Teresa. - -It struck her with a stab of amusement that her tone of reverent sympathy -was rather like Jollypot’s—always agog to encourage any expression of the -pure and poetical spirit that she was sure was burning in every young -male bosom. - -“Yes, it _was_ ... an extraordinary time—for all of us; but for you in -the trenches! And all that death—I’ve often wondered about that; how did -it strike you?” - -“Oh, well, that was nothing new to _me_—I mean some people hadn’t -realised till the War that there was such a thing; but my old Nanny died -when I was nine—and then, there was my mother.” - -He paused; and then in quite a different tone he said: - -“Did it used to scare you stiff when you were a child if you heard the -clock strike midnight?” - -“Oh, _yes_—did it you?” - -“Rather. And could you scare yourself stiff by staring at your own -reflection in a mirror?” - -“Oh, _yes_.” - -They laughed. - -But Teresa felt the presence of the angel Intimacy—a presence which, when -it comes between a man and a woman, shuffles the dreams and, so it seems, -causes the future to stir in its sleep. - -“I say! Isn’t this extraordinary? We _are_ getting on well, aren’t we? -One doesn’t often talk to a person about these sort of things the first -time one meets them,” and Rory gave a light, mocking laugh. - -Teresa felt absurdly, exaggeratedly disappointed; and why did he use such -a strongly scented hair-wash? - -The second game of Snooker came to an end, David, this time, potting the -black. - -“Well, Munroe, what about a ‘wee doch-an-doris’?” said Dick, opening the -tantalus. - -Concha stretched her soft, supple mouth in an enormous yawn, rubbed her -head on Dick’s shoulder, and said, “Dad always talks to the Irish in a -brogue and to the Scotch like Harry Lauder—it’s _his_ joke.” - -“And theirs, I suppose, is to answer in English,” said Rory, getting up -from the sofa and merging at once into the atmosphere of the Snookerites. - -Teresa wondered if it were consciously that Concha was always more -affectionate to their father when she had strange men for an audience. -Then, seeing in Guy’s eye that he wanted to continue his idiotic talk -about Oscar Wilde and brilliance, she slipped away to bed. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -1 - -The next morning Teresa dressed very carefully; she put on a lilac -knitted gown, cut square and low at the neck, and a long necklace of jade. - -She got down to breakfast to find Arnold, Jollypot, Rory, and Guy already -settled. - -Rory looked at her with unseeing eyes, and got her her tea and boiled egg -with obviously perfunctory politeness. - -He was clearly eager to get back to the conversation with Guy which she -had interrupted by her arrival and needs. - -“But you know, Guy, the only _amusing_ relation we had was old Lionel -Fane—he was a _priceless_ old boy ... what was it he used to say again -when he was introduced to a lady?” - -“‘How d’ye do, how d’ye do, oh beautiful passionate body that never has -ached with a heart!’ And then, do you remember how he used to turn down -his sock and scratch his ankle, and then look round with a grin and say, -‘I don’t mean to be provocative.’ ...” - -“He _was_ priceless! And then....” - -“For God’s sake stop talking about your beastly relations,” growled -Arnold; but Guy went on, undaunted. - -“But the person I should have liked to have been was my mother or yours -when they were young—their portraits by Richmond hanging in the Academy -with a special policeman and roped off from the crowd—and that in the -days of the Jersey Lily, too! Oh, it would have been glorious to have -been a beauty of the eighties.” - -“Yes; but one might as well have gone the whole hog, you know—been the -Prince of Wales’s mistress, and that sort of thing. Your mother, of -course, didn’t make such a very bad match, but mine—a miserable younger -son of a Scotch laird! I mean, I think they might have done a lot better -for themselves.” - -“Oh, Lord! Let’s start a conversation about _our_ relations, Teresa. -Edward Lane, now ...” said Arnold. - -But he could not down the shrill scream of Guy, once more taking up -the tale: “Well, they weren’t, of course, so cinemaish as the Sisters -Gunning, for instance ... but still, it was all rather amusing ... and -all these queer Victorian stunts they invented....” - -“Kicking off their shoes in the middle of a reel, and that sort of thing? -Uncle Jimmy says there was quite a little war in Dublin as to which was -the belle of the Royal Hospital Ball, then afterwards, too, in Scotland -at the Northern Meeting....” - -“I should have liked to have seen them driving with Ouida in Florence—the -Italians saying, _bella, bella_, when they passed them, and Ouida -graciously bowing and taking it as a tribute to herself.” - -“I _know_! And then they....” - -Then Concha strolled in, and Rory immediately broke off his sentence, -jumped up eagerly, and cried, “Grant and Cockburn, please—four buttons, -lilac.” - -“What’s all this about?” said Arnold. - -“Oh! I bet her a pair of spats last night that I’d be down to breakfast -before her. Tea or coffee? I say, I suddenly remembered in the middle of -the night the name of that priceless book I was telling you about; it’s -_Strawberry Leaves_, by A. Leaf—I’ll try to get it for you.” - -Evidently the “angel Intimacy” had been very busy last night after Teresa -had gone to bed. - -Then the Doña appeared—to the surprise of her daughters, as she generally -breakfasted in her room. - -Her appearance was a protest. Dick had decided (most unnecessarily, she -considered) to have a cold and a day in bed. - -Her eye immediately fell on Teresa, and in a swift, humorous glance from -top to toe she took in all the details of her toilette. - -“Thank you very much, but I prefer helping myself,” she said curtly to -Rory; his attentiveness seemed to her a direct reflection on Arnold, -who never waited on any one. Nor did she encourage his attempts at -conversation. “I have been telling Miss Concha....” “I do hope you’ll -take me round the garden—I know all about that sort of thing, I do -really.” - -It was a superb day, and the sun was beating fiercely on the tightly-shut -windows; the room smelt of sausages and bacon and tea and soap and -hair-wash. Teresa felt that the sight of the pulpy eviscera of Arnold’s -roll would soon make her sick. - -“By the way, where’s the Scot?” said Concha. “Arnold, hadn’t you better -go up and find him?” - -A scuffling was heard behind the door, and in burst Anna and Jasper, -having, in spite of Nanny, simply scrambled through their nursery -breakfast, as thrilled as ’Snice himself by the smell of new people. -Jasper was all wriggling and squeaking in his desire for attention; Anna, -outwardly calmer, was wondering whether Rory had relations abroad, and -whether they wrote to him, and what the stamps on the envelopes were like. - -“Now then, gently, darlings, gently! Wait a minute; here you are, -Jasper,” and the Doña held out to him a spoonful of honey. - -“But where is our good Scot?” repeated Concha. - -“The worst of going up to Cambridge is that one never goes down,” shouted -Guy to Jollypot, for want of a better audience; whereupon, regardless of -the fact that Guy was still talking, Jollypot began to repeat to herself -in a low, emotional voice: - - Does the road wind uphill all the way? - Yes, to the very end. - Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? - From morn to night, my friend. - -Jasper began to wriggle worse than ever, and, having first cast a furtive -glance at his grandmother and aunts, said shrilly, “I dreamt of Mummie -last night ... and she had ... she had ... such a funny nose....” and his -voice tailed off in a little giggle, half proud, half guilty. - -“Jasper!” exclaimed simultaneously the Doña, Teresa, Concha, and Anna, in -tones of shocked reproval. - -“Dear little man!” murmured Jollypot. - -Shortly after her death, Jasper had genuinely dreamt that his mother was -standing by his bed, and, on telling it next morning, had produced a most -gratifying impression; but so often had he tried since to produce the -same impression in the same way that to say he had “dreamt of Mummie” -had become a recognised form of “naughtiness”; and, as one could attract -attention by naughtiness as well as by pathos, he continued at intervals -to announce that he had “dreamt of Mummie.” - -“Concha, Teresa, Jollypot! We must hurry. The car will soon be here to -take us to mass,” said the Doña. - -Concha hesitated a moment—Teresa’s eye was on her—then said to herself, -“I’ll _not_ be downed by her,” and aloud, “I don’t think I’m coming this -morning, Doña.” - -The Doña raised her eyebrows; Teresa’s face was sphinx-like. - -At that moment in walked David—looking a little embarrassed. - -He gravely faced the friendly sallies; and then he said, with an evident -effort: - -“No; I didn’t sleep in, its ... I’ve been to early mass.” - -“Walked?” exclaimed Arnold. “Lord!” - -“Oh, Mr. Munroe, I’m so sorry!” cried the Doña, “you should have told me -last night ... you see, I didn’t know you were a Catholic.” - -“I bet you don’t know what ‘to sleep in’ means,” Rory whispered to Concha. - - -2 - -“Why didn’t you tell me Mr. Munroe was a Catholic?” said the Doña as she -was putting on her things for mass. - -“How could I have told you when I didn’t know myself?” answered Dick from -his bed. - -“Well, he is, anyhow ... and what we’re going to do with him to-day with -you in bed ... it’s very odd, every time you invite any one down who -isn’t your precious Hugh Mallam or one of your other cronies you seem to -catch a cold. Poor Dick, you won’t be able to play golf to-morrow!” and -with this parting thrust the Doña left the room. - -But Dick was too comfortable to be more than momentarily ruffled. - -There he lay: bathed, shaved, and wrapped in an old padded -dressing-jacket of the Doña’s (sky-blue, embroidered in pink flowers), -which he had surreptitiously rescued from a jumble sale, against his own -colds. - -At the foot of the bed snored ’Snice, at his elbow stood a siphon and a -long glass into which four or five oranges had been squeezed, and before -him lay a delicious day—no Church (“I say, Dick! That’s the treat that -_never_ palls!” Hugh Mallam used to say), an excellent luncheon brought -up on a tray, then a sleep, then tea, then, say, a game of Bézique with -little Anna ... but the best thing of all that awaited him was a romance -of the Secret Service. - -He put on his eyeglasses and glanced through the headings of the -chapters: _Mr. ?_; _A Little Dinner at the Savoy_; _The Freckled -Gentleman Takes a Hand_; _Double Bluff_. - -Yes; it promised well. It was always a good sign if the chapters took -their headings from the language of Poker. - -With a little sigh of content he began to read. Had he but known it, it -was a most suitable exercise for a Sunday morning; for, in the true sense -of the word, it was a profoundly religious book. - -On and on he read. - -The bedroom, unused to denizens at midday, seemed, in its exquisite -orderliness, frozen into a sedate reserve. The tide of life had left -it very clean and glistening and still: not a breath rustled the pink -cretonne curtains; the autumn roses in a bowl on the dressing-table might -have been made of alabaster; the ornaments on the mantelpiece stood -shoulder to shoulder without a smile at their own incongruity—a small -plaster cast of Montañes’ _Jesùs del Gran Poder_ beside a green china pig -with a slit in its back, which had once held the savings of the little -Lanes; with an equal lack of self-consciousness, an enlarged photograph -of Arnold straddling in the pads of a wicket-keeper hung on the wall -beside an engraving in which the Virgin, poised in mid-air, was squeezing -from her breast a stream of luminous milk into the mouth of a kneeling -monk; and everywhere—from among the scent-bottles on the dressing-table, -beside a chromograph of Cadiz on the wall—everywhere smiled the lovely -face of Pepa. - -’Snice stirred at his feet, and, laying down his book, Dick dragged his -smooth, brown, unresisting length to the top of the bed. - -A member of his Club, who was an eminent physician was always talking -about the importance of “relaxing.” “Pity he can’t see ’Snice,” thought -Dick, as he lifted one of the limp paws, then, letting go, watched it -heavily flop down on to the counterpane. “’Snice! ’Snice!” he repeated -to himself; and then began to chuckle, as, for the thousandth time, he -realised the humour of the name. - -“’Snice,” meaning “it’s nice,” had been the catch-word at the Pantomime -one year; and Arnold or Concha or some one had decided that that was what -Fritz, as he was then called, was constantly trying to say; so, in time, -’Snice had become his name. - -Yes, they certainly were very amusing, his children; he very much -enjoyed their jokes. But recently it had been borne in upon him that -they did not care so very much about his. He often felt _de trop_ in the -billiard-room—his own billiard-room; especially when Arnold was at home. - -He suddenly remembered how bored he and Hugh Mallam used to be by his own -father’s jokes—or, rather, puns; and those quotations of his! Certain -words or situations would produce automatically certain quotations; -for instance, if his austere and ill-favoured wife or daughter revoked -at Whist, it would be, “When lovely woman stoops to folly!” And, -unfortunately, his partner’s surname was Hope; unfortunately, because -every time one of them said, “Mr. Hope told me so,” it would be, “Hope -told a flattering tale.” - -But surely he, Dick, wasn’t as tedious as that? He rarely made a pun, and -never a quotation; nevertheless, he did not seem to amuse his children. - -Good Lord! He would be fifty-seven his next birthday—the age his father -was when he died. It seemed incredible that he, “Little Dickie,” should -be the age of his own father. - -Damn them! Damn them! He didn’t _feel_ old—and that was the only thing -that mattered. - -He stuck out his chin obstinately, put on his eyeglasses again, and, -returning to his novel, was very soon identified, once more, with the -hero, and hence—inviolate, immortal, taboo. Whether hiding in the -bracken, or lurking, disguised, in low taverns of Berlin, what had he to -fear? For how could revolvers, Delilahs, aeroplanes, all the cunning of -Hell or the Wilhelm Strasse, prevail against one who is knit from the -indestructible stuff of shadows and the dreams of a million generations? -He belonged to that shadowy Brotherhood who, before Sir Walter had given -them names and clothed them in flesh, had hunted the red deer, and -followed green ladies, in the Borderland—not of England and Scotland, but -of myth and poetry. As Hercules, he had fought the elements; as Mithras, -he had hidden among the signs of the Zodiac; as Osiris, he had risen from -the dead. - -No; the hero of these romances cannot fall, for if he fell the stars -would fall with him, the corn would not grow, the vines would wither, and -the race of man would become extinct. - - -3 - -Rory Dundas, being a capricious young man, devoted himself, that morning, -not to Concha, but to Anna and Jasper. - -After he had been taken to scratch the backs of the pigs, and to eat -plums in the orchard, Anna proposed a game of clock-golf. - -“Are you coming to play?” they called out from the lawn to Concha, -Arnold, and David, who were sitting in the loggia. - -“No, we’re not!” called back Arnold. - -Concha would have liked very much to have gone; first, because it seemed -a pity to have incurred for nothing Teresa’s stare and the Doña’s raised -eyebrows; second, because she had been finding it uphill work to keep -Arnold civil, and David in the conversation. But her childhood’s habit of -docility to Arnold had become automatic, so she sat on in the loggia. - -“I think, maybe, I’ll go and try my hand ... they seem nice wee kiddies,” -said David, and he got up, in his slow, deliberate way, and strolled off -towards the party on the lawn. - -“Kiddies!” exclaimed Arnold in a voice of disgust, when he was out of -ear-shot. “The Scotch always seem to use the wrong slang.” - -“You’re getting as fussy as Teresa,” laughed Concha. - -“Oh, if it comes to that, she needn’t think she’s the only person with a -sense of language. What’s the matter with her? Each time I come down she -seems more damned superior. Who does she think she is? She’s reached the -point of being dumb with superiorness, next she’ll go blind with it, then -she’ll die of it,” and, frowning heavily, he began to fill his pipe. - -His bitterness against Teresa dated from the days before the War when he -used to write poetry. He had once read her some of his poems, and she, -being younger and more brutal than she was now, had exclaimed, “But, -Arnold, they’re absolutely dead! They’re decomposing with deadness.” He -had never forgiven her. - -“I suppose she gives you a pretty thin time, doesn’t she? She _does_ hate -you!” - -Concha blushed. An unexpected trait in Concha was an inordinate -vanity—the idea that any one, child, dog, boring old woman, could -possibly dislike her was too humiliating to be admitted—and though one -part of her was fully aware that she irritated, nay, jarred æsthetically -upon Teresa, the other part of her obstinately, angrily, denied it. - -“I don’t care if she does ... besides she doesn’t ... really,” she said -hotly. - -She then chose a cigarette, placed it in a very long amber holder, lit -it, and began to smoke it with an air of intense sensuous enjoyment. -Concha was still half playing at being grown up, and one of the things -about her that irritated Teresa was that she was apt to walk and talk, -to pour out tea, and smoke cigarettes, like an English actress in a -drawing-room play, never quite losing her “stagyness.” - -“Do you know where the shoe pinches?” asked Arnold. “It’s that you are -six years younger than she is; if it were less or more it would be all -right—but _six_ years is jolly hard to forgive. You see, Teresa is still -nominally a girl. By Jove!” and he gave a short, scornful laugh, “there -she is, probably telling herself that you get on her nerves because -you’re frivolous, and like rag-time, and all the rest of it, while all -the time she, the immaculate, is just suffering from suppressed sex, like -any other spinster.” - -This explanation definitely jarred on Concha: she, too, suspected Teresa -of being jealous of her, but deep down she hoped that this jealousy -was based on something less fortuitous and more flattering to herself -than six years’ juniority; nor did she like being thought of as a mere -frivolous “fox-trotter.” She had the tremendous pride of generation of -the post-War adolescent; she and her friends she felt as a brilliant, -insolent triumphant sodality, free, wise, invincible, who, having tasted -of the fruit of the seven symbolic trees of Paradise, and having found -their flavour insipid, had chosen, with their bold, rather weary eyes -wide open, to expend their magnificent talents on fox-trots, _revues_, -and dalliance, to turn life and its treacherous possibilities into a -Platonic _kermis_—oh, it was maddening of Teresa not to see this, to -persist in thinking of them as frivolous, commonplace, rather vulgar -young mediocrities! She should just hear some of the midnight talks -between Concha and her friend, Elfrida Penn ... the passion, the satire, -the profundity! - -As a matter of fact, these talks were mainly of young men, chiffons, -the doings of their other schoolfellows, what their head mistress had -said to them on such and such an occasion at school, with an occasional -interjection of, “Oh, it’s all _beastly_!” or a wondering whether twenty -years hence they would be very dull and stout, and whether they would -still be friends. - -But midnight talks are apt to acquire in retrospect a great profundity -and significance. - -Also, the crudeness of Arnold’s words—“suppressed sex, like any other -spinster”—shocked her in spite of herself. Her old, child’s veneration -for Teresa lived on side by side with her new conviction that she was -_passée_, out-of-date, pre-War, and it made her wince that she should be -explained by nasty, Freudian theories. - -“Oh, Lord! I’m sick of it all!” she cried with exaggerated vehemence. - -“Sick of what?” - -“_This._” - -“I suppose it’s pretty difficult at home now?” - -“Oh, well, you know it’s never been the same since Pepa died.” - -This time it was Arnold that winced; he could not yet bear to hear Pepa -mentioned. - -“It’s made the Doña a fanatic,” Concha continued, “and she never was that -before, you know. Who was it? Teresa, or some one, said that English ivy -had grown round Peter’s rock, and birds had made their nest in it ... -_before_. But now she’s absolutely rampantly Catholic ... you know, she -wants to dedicate the house to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and have little -squares of stuff embroidered with it nailed on all the doors....” - -“_Good Lord!_” - -“But, of course, Dad won’t hear of it.” - -“Well, I don’t quite see what it’s got to do with _him_—if it makes her -happier,” and his voice became suddenly aggressive. - -“And she’d do anything on earth to prevent either of us marrying a -Protestant ... after all, what do-o-oes it all matter? Lord, what fools -these mortals be!” - -And Concha, who, for a few moments, had been completely natural, once -more turned into an English actress in a drawing-room play. - -“Um ... yes ...” said Arnold meditatively, sighing, and knocking out the -ashes of his pipe. - -“Hulloa!” she suddenly drawled, as a plump, grinning, round-faced, young -man made his appearance on the loggia. - -It was Eben Moore, son of the vicar and senior “snotty” on one of His -Majesty’s ships. - -As to his name—it was short for Ebenezer, which, as Mrs. Moore -continually told one, “has always been a name in my husband’s family.... -My husband, you know, is the youngest son of a youngest son,” she would -add with a humorously wry smile, as if there was something at once -glorious and regrettable in belonging to the Tribe of Benjamin. - -His face perceptibly fell as he caught sight of the two personable men -playing clock-golf on the lawn. - -“Aow lor’! You didn’t tell me as what there was company,” he said, -imitating the local accent. - -“Good God!” muttered Arnold, who found Eben’s humour nauseating; and he -slouched off to join Guy, who was writing letters in the billiard-room. - -“Got it?” said Concha, stretching out her hand and looking at him through -her eyelashes. - -Eben giggled. “I say! It’s pretty hot stuff, you know.” - -“E-e-eben! Don’t be a fool; hand it over.” - -Eben, grinning from ear to ear, took a sealed envelope out of his pocket -and gave it to her, and having opened it, she began to read its contents -with little squirts of laughter. - -From time immemorial, young ladies have had a fancy for exercising -their calligraphy and taste in copying elegant extracts into an album; -for instance, there is a Chinese novel, translated by an abbé of the -eighteenth century, which tells of ladies who, all day long, sat in -pagodas, copying passages from the classics in hands like the flight of a -dragon. Harriet Smith, too, had an album into which she and Emma copied -acrostics. - -Concha owned to the same harmless weakness; though the extracts copied -into her album could perhaps scarcely be qualified as “elegant”: there -was, among other things, an unpublished play by W. S. Gilbert—(“What -I love about our English humour—_Punch_, and W. S. Gilbert—is that it -never has anything ... well, _questionable_,” Mrs. Moore would sometimes -exclaim to the Doña), Wilke’s _Essay on Woman_, and _Poor but Honest_. - -One day, Teresa, happening to come into Concha’s room, had caught sight -of the album, and asked if she might look at it. - -“Oh, _do_, by all means,” Concha had drawled, partly from defiance, -partly from curiosity. - -Impassively, Teresa had read it through; and then had said, “I’d advise -you to ask Arnold the next time he’s in Cambridge to find you an old copy -of Law’s _Call to a Devout Life_—that man in the market-place might have -one—beautifully bound, if possible. Then take out the pages and bind -_this_ in the cover.” - -Concha had done so; and if she had been as relentless an observer of -Teresa as Teresa was of her, she might have detected in what had just -transpired a touch on Teresa’s part of under-stated, nevertheless -unmistakable, _cabotinage_. - -The contents of the sealed envelope, which was causing her so much -amusement, was a copy of the song, _Clergymen’s Daughters_ that on his -last leave she had persuaded Eben on his return to his ship to make for -her from the gun-room collection, and which he had not on their previous -meeting had an opportunity of giving her. - -But she was not aware that there are three current versions of this song, -corresponding to the X, the double X, and triple X on the labels of -whisky bottles, and that it was only the double X strength that Eben had -given her. - - -4 - -After luncheon most of them played Snooker, to the accompaniment of the -gramophone, Anna and Jasper taking turns in changing the records. - -Eben had hurt his hand, so he sat and talked to Teresa on the sofa. - -It was a fact that had always both puzzled and annoyed her that he -evidently enjoyed talking to her. - -“Have you read Compton Mackenzie’s last?” he asked. - -Why would every one persist in talking to her about books? And why did he -not say, “the last Compton Mackenzie?” She decided that his diction had -been influenced by frequenting his mother’s Women’s Institute and hearing -continually of “little Ernest, Mrs. Brown’s second,” or “Mrs. Kett’s -last.” - -“No, I’m afraid I haven’t.” - -“I’ll lend it to you—I’m not sure if it’s as good as the others, though -... it’s funny, but I’m very fastidious about novels; the only thing I -really care about is style—I’m a regular sensualist about fine English.” - -“Are you? Perhaps you will like this, then—‘I remember Father Benson -saying with his fascinating little stutter: He has such a g-g-gorgeously -multitudinous mind’?” - -Eben stared at her, quite at a loss as to what she was talking about. - -“It sounds ... it sounds topping. What is it from?” - -“I don’t quite remember.” - -But it wasn’t fair, she decided. Because she happened to date from -the feeling of flatness and disgust aroused in her by this sentence, -read in a magazine years ago, the awakening in her of the power of -distinguishing between literature and journalism, it did not follow -that it was exceptionally frightful or that other people ought to -react to it in the same way that she had. And yet, “gorgeous palaces,” -“multitudinous, seas incarnadine”—the words themselves were beautiful -enough in all conscience. Anyhow, it was not Eben’s fault; though “a -regular sensualist for fine English....” Good God! - -“Do you want _Hee—hee—Heeweeine Melodies_, or _Way Down in Georgia_, or -_Abide With Me_? Arnold! Do you want _Hee-wee-ween Melodies_, or _Way -Down in Georgia_, or _Abide With Me_? Do say!” yelled Anna from the -gramophone. - -“People are inclined to think that sailors don’t go in for reading, -and that sort of thing, but as a matter of fact ... our Commander, for -instance, has a topping library, and all really good books—history -mostly.” - -Rows upon rows of those volumes, the paper of which is so good, the -margins so wide, but out of which, if opened, one of the illustrations is -certain to fall—Lady Hamilton, or Ninon de l’Enclos, or Madame Récamier; -now Teresa knew who read these books. - -“Silly Billy! Silly Billy! Silly Billy!” yelled Anna and Jasper in chorus -as Rory missed a straight pot on the blue; it was their way of expressing -genuine friendliness to their playmate of the morning. - -On and on went Eben’s voice; scratch, grate, scratch, grate, went the -gramophone. - -The light began to grow colder and thinner. - -“Snookered for a pint!” - -“Be a sportsman now....” - -“I say!... he’s _done_ it!” - -“I say, you’re a devil of a fellow, Munroe!” - -The game ended and they put up their cues. - -“Now then, you two, what are you up to? Anna, you’re a hard-hearted -little thing; why aren’t you crying that I didn’t win?” - -At which sally of Rory’s the children doubled up with delighted laughter. - -They all seemed to be feeling the tedium of the period between luncheon -and tea, and lolled listlessly in chairs, or sat on the edge of the -billiard-table, swinging their legs. - -“Anna, darling, put on one of the Hawaiian melodies—it’s among those -there, I’m sure,” said Concha. - -After several false starts, and some scratchings of the needle (it was -Jasper’s turn to put on the record), the hot-scented tune began to -pervade the room. - -“That’s the sort of tune that on hot nights must have been played to -Oberon by his little Indian catamite,” said Guy, sitting down on the sofa -beside Teresa. - -She smiled a little absently; the Hawaiian melody was like a frame, -binding the room and its inmates into a picture. Concha, her eyes fixed -and dreamy; Rory, intent on a puzzle—shaking little rolling pellets into -holes or something; Arnold sitting on the edge of the billiard-table -while Anna lit his pipe for him; Jasper motionless, for once, his eyes -fixed intently on the needle of the gramophone; David standing by the -door gazing gravely at Concha, looking not unlike a Spanish Knight who -carries in his own veins more than a drop of the Moorish blood that it is -his holy mission to spill; Eben standing by the fireplace, a broad grin -on his face, his hands on his hips, swaying slightly, in time with the -music ... what was it he was like? Teresa suddenly remembered that it was -the principal boy in a little local pantomime they had all gone to one -Christmas—she evidently could not sing, because during the choruses she -would stand silent, grinning and swaying as Eben was doing now. - -The view was painted on the windows—a _pietà_ as nobly coloured as that -of Avignon; for, in spite of flowers and fruits and sunshine, on the -knees of the earth the year lay dying. - -Teresa was thinking, “The present frozen into the past—that is art. At -this moment things are looking as if they were the past. That is why I am -feeling as if I were having an adventure—because the present and the past -have become one.” - -Squeak! Burr! Gurr! went the gramophone. - -“Stop it, Jasper! Stop it!” - -“Beastly noise! It reminds me of the dentist.” - -The record was removed. - -“_Très entraînant_—as the deaf _bourgeoise_ said after having listened to -the Dead March in _Saul_,” said Guy; he had suddenly invented this Sam -Wellerism in the middle of the tune, and had hardly been able to wait -till the end to come out with it. - -Then Anna put on a fox-trot, and Rory and Concha, Arnold and Guy, in -the narrow space between the billiard-table and gramophone, hopped and -wriggled and jumped—one could not call it dancing. - -“Now then, Munroe,” cried Rory, when it was over, “You’re such hot stuff -at billiards—let’s see what you can do on the light fantastic.” - -“Yes, do, Mr. Munroe,” and Concha stood swaying before him, flushed and -provocative. - -“I’m afraid ... I don’t ... well, if you’ve got a tango here ... I used -to try my hand at it in Africa.” - -“Let’s see ... put on the _Tango de Rêve_, Anna. Got it?” - -David hesitated a moment; then, as if coming to a sudden resolution, he -clasped her, and stood waiting for the bar to end; then they began to -dance, and their souls seemed to leave their bodies, leaving them empty -to the tune, which gradually informed them till they and it were one; a -few short steps, then a breathless halt, a few more steps, another halt -... then letting themselves go a little, then another halt; their faces -tense and mask-like ... truly a strange dance, the Tango, speaking the -broken, taciturn, language of passion: - - Thanked be fortune: it hath been otherwise: - Twenty times better; but once especial - In thin array: after a pleasant guise, - When her loose gown did from her shoulders fall, - And she me caught in her arms long and small.... - -Grrr ... went the gramophone—the spell was snapt. - -“Bravo!” cried the audience, clapping; while ’Snice began to bark, and -the children to jump up and down and squeal. - -“You dance _divinely_!” cried Concha, flushed and laughing. - -David blushed, frowned, muttered something inaudible, and left the room. - -They exchanged looks of surprise. - -“Hot stuff!” said Rory; and they settled down to desultory, frivolous, -Anglo-Saxon chatter—not unlike fox-trots, thought Teresa. - -She shut her eyes, half mesmerised by the din of all the voices talking -together. - -The talk, like a flight of birds, squeezed itself out into a long thin -line, compressed itself into a compact phalanx, was now diagonal, now -round, now square, now all three at once, according to the relative -position of the talkers. - -“Don’t you _love_ Owen Nares? I love his English so—I love the way he -says, ‘I’m so _jolly_ glad to meet you.’” “I knew Middlesex would be -first—it was only poetic justice to Plum Warner.” “I don’t care a damn -what the _Nation_ or what the _New Statesman_ says—I happen to know....” -“Of course, with Jimmy Wilde it’s all grit and science—he ought to do him -in every time.” “Is it true that Leslie Henson wears spectacles off the -stage?” “How much do you think I gave for it? _Thirty bob._ A jeweller I -showed it to in town said it was the very finest Baltic amber—you see, I -got it out there.” “I _know_! My cousin, Guy’s brother, when he was going -out to Tin-Sin thought it would be nice to brighten up China, so he took -out an assortment of the merriest socks you ever saw in your life, and -when he was killed my aunt handed them over to me, and I had ’em dyed -black....” “Very nayce, too!” “What are you saying about socks? I wish to -God some one would mend mine!” “Well, _I_ got a bit of amber in an old -shop in Norwich....” “He’s a priceless little man ... he came out and -amused us at the front.” - -“Tea time!” said Arnold, looking at his watch and yawning. - -“Tea time!” the others echoed; and they all got up. - -“But look here, Miss Concha,” said Rory, “if you love Owen Nares so much, -why not come up and see him? It’s quite a good show ... you’ll look at -_him_ and I’ll look at the lady—though you’ll probably have the best of -it. What do you think, Arnold? We could dine first at the Berkeley or -somewhere ... well, look here, that’s settled; we must fix up a night.” - -Teresa felt a sudden and, to her, most unusual craving for the life that -smells of lip-salve and powder, where in bright, noisy restaurants “every -shepherd tells his tale ...” where “the beautiful Miss Brabazons” laugh -and dance and triumph eternally. - - -5 - -After tea they decided to go a walk, and escort Eben part of his way -home—a delightful plan, it seemed to Anna, Jasper, and ’Snice; but to -Anna and Jasper the Doña said firmly, “No, my darlings; I want you.” - -Their faces fell; they knew it meant what Nanny, who was a Protestant, -called “a Bible lesson from kind Granny.” - -Needless to say, the fact that these lessons were opposed to the -wishes—nay, to the express command—of Dr. Sinclair, was powerless in -deterring the Doña from attempting to save her grandchildren’s souls; -and, even if she failed in the attempt, they should at any rate not be -found in the condition of criminal ignorance of the children of one of -Pepa’s friends who had asked why there were always “big plus-signs” on -the tops of churches. - -The Doña was not merely a Catholic; she was also a Christian—that is to -say, though she did not always follow his precepts, she had an intense -personal love of Christ. - -Besides the shadowy figure struggling towards “projection” through the -ritual of the Church’s year, there are more concrete representations on -which the Catholic can feed his longings. - -The Doña’s love of Christ dated from the first Seville Holy Week that she -could remember. - -She had sat with her mother and her little brother, Juanito, watching -the _pasos_ carried past on the shoulders of the _cofradias_ ... many a -beautiful Virgin, velvet-clad, pearl-hung, like Isabella the Catholic. -Then had come a group of more than life-sized figures—a young, bearded -man, his face as white as death and flecked with blood, the veins of -his hands as knotted as the cords that bound them, surrounded by half -a dozen fiendish-looking men, fists clenched as if about to strike him, -some clutching stones in their upraised hands, all with faces contorted -with hatred. - -“Look! Look! Who are these wicked men?” cried Juanito. - -“These are the Jews,” answered their mother. - -“And who is the poor man?” asked the Doña. - -“Jésus Christos.” - -Juanito, his little fists clenched, was all for flying at the plaster -bullies; but the Doña was howling for pity of the _pobre caballero_. - -Then, at Christmas time in every church there was a crèche in which lay -the Infant Jesus, his small, waxen hands stretched out in welcome, his -face angelically sweet. - -Also; at different times, for instance, when the Gospel was read in -Spanish, during her preparation for her first Communion, the abstract -presentation of the Liturgy had been supplemented with stories from His -life on earth, and quotations from His own words. - -Indeed, the sources and nature of the Doña’s knowledge of Jesus was not -unlike that of some old peasant woman of Palestine. The old woman, say, -would, from time to time, ride into Nazareth on her donkey, carrying -a basket of grapes and olives to sell in the market: and perhaps, if -the basket should have fallen and scattered the fruit, or if she had a -pitcher to fill at the fountain, she may have received a helping hand or -a kindly word from the gentlest and strangest-spoken young man that had -ever crossed her path. - -Then one day she may have paid her first visit to Jerusalem—perhaps a -lawsuit over a boundary taking her there, or the need to present her -orphaned grandchild in the Temple—and have seen this same young man led -through the streets, bound with cords, while the populace shouted, -“Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” and have returned to her remote little farm -with an ache in her heart. - -And, as the years would go by, from the tales of wayfarers, from rumours -blown from afar, she might come to believe that somehow or other the -young man had died for the poor—for her; had died and risen again. And -gradually, as with the years his legend grew, she would come to look upon -him as a fairy-being, akin to the old sanctities of the countryside, -swelling her grapes, plumping her olives, and keeping away locusts and -blight. But, towards the end of her life, business may have taken her -again to Nazareth, where, hearing that the young man’s mother was still -alive, something may have compelled her to go and visit her. And in -the little room behind the carpenter’s shop, where the other sons and -grandsons were planing and sawing, and singing to ancient melodies of -the desert songs of plenty and vengeance and the Messiah, the two old -women would talk together in hushed tones of Him who so many years ago -had been crucified and buried. And through the mother’s anecdotes of His -childhood and tearful encomiums, “He was ever a good kind son to me,”—the -fairy-being would once more become human and ponderable—the gentlest -young man that had ever crossed her path. - -So far, the Doña had not been very successful in bringing Anna and Jasper -to their Lord. - -For instance, when she had told them the story of Christ among the -doctors, Anna had merely remarked coldly and reprovingly, “He must have -been a very goody-goody, grown-uppish sort of boy.” - -This particular evening the Doña had decided to consecrate to an exegesis -of the doctrine of Transsubstantiation. - -When the Doña said that at a certain point of the mass the bread turned -to the actual flesh and blood and bones of Jesus, Anna’s face assumed -an expression of dogged scepticism, and having decided that she must -ask Teresa about it, continued her own thoughts: Mamselle, who gave her -French lessons in Cambridge, had fired her imagination with accounts of -the _bouktis_ they used to have in the Surbiton family where she was once -governess—“_vraiment, c’était passionant; je me demande pourquoi Dr. -Sinclair n’organise pas des bouktis à Trinité—ça serait très amusant pour -les jeunes gens_....” It _was_ a good idea! All the people with buried -names of books, and having to guess. Oh, yes!... one could go with a lot -of little lambs’ tails sewed on one’s frock ... yes, but how was one -going to get in the “_of Shakespeare_”.... _Of course_ ... what a goose -she was not to have realised it before ... _bouktis_ was Mamselle’s way -of saying “book-teas” ... that’s what the parties were called—“book-teas.” - -Thus Anna; as to Jasper—if one could reduce the instantaneous and -fantastic picture produced on his mind to a definite consecutive -statement, it would read something like this: By the powerful spells of a -clergyman, who was also a magician, pieces of bread were turned into tiny -men—long-robed, bearded, and wearing golden straw hats of which nothing -but the brim could be seen from in front. Then the clergyman distributed -to every one at the party one of the tiny men, to be their very own. They -each, forthwith, swallowed their tiny man, and he made himself a little -nest in their stomachs, whence he could be summoned to be played with -whenever they liked. - -He began jumping up and down, his body trembling like that of an excited -terrier. - -“Oh, I want, I want, I want some of that bread,” he cried. “Oh, when can -I have it, Doña? Oh, I can’t wait!” - -Needless to say, the Doña was not in the least taken in—she did not take -it for a sign of Grace, nor did it seem to her in the least touching; -but she knew it would strike Jollypot as being both, and the picture -she foresaw that the incident would produce on her—that of the innocent -little pagan calling aloud to God for the spiritual food that was his -birthright—was one that the Doña felt would be both soothing, and -expressive of the way in which she would have liked the incident to have -appeared to herself. - -A perfect household of slaves would include a sentimentalist and a cynic -by means of whom the lord, whatever his own temperament, could express -vicariously whatever interpretation of events was the one that harmonised -with his plans or mood of the moment. - -It was as she expected; Jollypot’s eyes filled with tears, and she -murmured, “Poor little man! poor little man!” - -And she was long haunted by the starving cry of the innocent, “I want -that bread! I want that bread!” - - -6 - -The walkers set out in the direction of the view, strolling in a bunch -down the grass path between the border. - -“You know, I don’t really like these herbaceous things—they aren’t tame. -I like flowers you can make a pet of, roses and violets and that sort of -thing,” said Rory, looking towards Teresa. - -She did not meet his eye, feeling in no mood to feed his vanity by -sympathising with his fancies. - -From the village to their right rang out the chimes for evensong. - -“Would Mrs. Moore mind if you missed church, Eben?” asked Concha. - -“She would be _grieved_,” grinned Eben. “You see, Lady Norton wasn’t -there this morning, but she always comes in the evening, and the mater -wants her to see my manly beauty.” - -This remark, thought Teresa, showed a certain acuteness and humour; but -all Concha’s contemporaries seemed to have these qualities, and yet, it -meant so little, existed side by side with such an absence of serious -emotion, such an ignoring of intellectual beauty, such a—such a—such -an un-Platonic turn of mind. Probably every one in the sixteenth and -seventeenth centuries—country parsons, grocers’ apprentices, aldermen, -fine ladies—had only to take up a goose’s quill and write as they talked -to produce the most exquisite prose: witness the translation of the -Bible by a body of obscure, and (considering the fatuity of some of -their mistranslations) half-witted, old divines. Perhaps the collective -consciousness of humanity was silently capturing, one after the other, -the outposts of the intelligence, so that some day we should all share in -a flat and savourless communism of apprehension. - -But then the English, as a whole, had lost the power of writing -automatically fine prose ... oh, it was not worth bothering about! - -When they got out of the grounds of Plasencia, they broke up into couples -and trios—Rory moving to one side of Concha, David, his back looking -rather dogged, to the other. Arnold had forgotten his distaste for Eben -in a heated discussion of the battle of Jutland. Teresa found herself -walking with Guy. - -To the right lay a field of stubble, ruddled with poppies, and to the -right of that a little belt of trees. Teresa had long noticed how in -autumn scarlet is the oriflamme of the spectrum; for round it the other -colours rally at their gayest and most gallant. For instance, the dull -red roofs of the cluster of barns to the right glowed like rubies, if -one’s glance, before resting on them, travelled through the poppy-shot -stubble; and, following the same route, her eye could detect autumnal -tints in the belt of trees, which otherwise would have been imperceptible. - -“How lovely poppies would be if they weren’t so ubiquitous,” said Guy. -“I always think of poppies when I see all the Renoirs in the Rue de la -Boétie in Paris—every second shop’s a picture dealer, and they all have -at least two Renoirs in their window—dreams of beauty if there weren’t so -many of ’em. And yet, I don’t know—that very exuberance, the feeling of -an exquisite, delicate, yet unexigeant flower springing up in profusion -in the lightest and poorest soil may be a quality of their charm.” - -Teresa said nothing; but her brows slightly contracted. - -Now they were walking past one of the few fields of barley that were -still standing—all creamy and steaming ... oh, dear, that simile of -Guy’s, in one of his poems, between a field of barley and a great bowl -of some American patent cereal on a poster ... at any moment there might -appear on the sky the gigantic, grinning face of the cereal-fiend, -whose sole function was to grin with anticipative greed, and brandish a -spoon on the point of being dipped into the foaming, smoking brew ... -disgusting; and maddening that it should cling to her memory. - -“Well, I suppose long ago the Danes and Saxons fought battles here; and -the buried hatchet has turned the wild flowers red ... or does iron in -the soil turn flowers blue?” - -“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Teresa coldly. - -They walked on in silence for a few minutes. - - As through the land at eve we went - And plucked the ripened ears, - My wife and I.... - -“My wife and I ... fell out ... how does it go?” - -“Not like that, Guy,” said Teresa, with a short laugh. - -Guy blushed to the roots of his yellow hair; he had a secret handicap of -which he was horribly ashamed—practically no ear for rhythm; and it was -partly the lameness of his verses that had made him fall back on a poetry -that had neither rhyme nor rhythm. - -When he was absent from Teresa—even during a few hours—his idea of -her would undergo a swift change; though remaining aloof, she would -turn into a wonderfully sympathetic lady—remote, but not inaccessible; -a lady eminently suited to moving gracefully among the Chippendale, -coloured prints, and Queen Anne lacquer of his dining-room in St. James’s -Street; quite at home, also, among the _art nègre_ and modern French -pictures of his drawing-room; receiving his _mots_ with a whimsically -affectionate smile; in society bringing out all that was most brilliant -in him—existing, in short, merely for his own greater glory. - -It took a very short absence from her—for instance, the interval between -dinner and breakfast the next morning—for this idea of her to oust -completely the real one. Then he would see her again, and would again be -bruised and chilled by the haughty coldness masked by her low, gentle -voice, her many silences; and the idea would be shattered; to come -together again the minute he was out of her presence. - -“Of course! You _would_ be incapable of appreciating Tennyson,” he said -angrily. - -“Why? Because I venture to hint that your version doesn’t scan?” - -“Oh, it’s not only that,” he almost screamed; “it’s really because you -think it’s sentimental to quote Tennyson. Can’t you see that simple, -trite words like these are the only ones suited to expressing the -threadbare yet exquisite emotion that one feels when one walks through -autumn fields on Sunday evening?” - -“Yes; but why not make those simple, trite words scan?... and look here, -Guy,” she added with unusual heat, “it seems to me perfectly absurd to -admire Tennyson and crab Wordsworth. It makes one wonder if any of your -literary tastes are sincere. Everything you dislike in Wordsworth is -in Tennyson too—only in Tennyson the prosaicness and flatness, though -it may be better expressed, is infinitely more ignoble. I simply don’t -understand this attitude to Wordsworth—it makes me think that all you -care about is verbal dexterity. I don’t believe you know what real poetry -means.” - -Poor Guy! How could he know that her irritation had really nothing to do -with his attitude to Wordsworth, that, in fact, he and his poetics were -merely a scapegoat? - -Shattered and sick at heart, he felt that his fears of the previous -evening about Oscar Wilde and brilliance had been ruthlessly confirmed. - -She looked at him; he actually had tears in his eyes. - -“I ... I seem to have lost my temper,” she said apologetically, “but it -was only ... I’ve got rather a headache, as a matter of fact, and what -you said yesterday about Wordsworth has rankled—he’s my favourite poet. -And you know I belong in taste to an older generation; I simply don’t -understand modern things. But, as a matter of fact, I often like your -poetry very much.” - -This mollified him for the moment. - -“I say!” he exclaimed suddenly, walking more quickly, “other people seem -to be quarrelling.” - -Sure enough: the trio ahead was standing still; Concha’s lips were -twitching and she was looking self-conscious; Rory’s eyebrows were arched -in surprise; and David, glowering and thunderous, was standing with -clenched fists. As Teresa and Guy came up to them he was saying fiercely: -“... and I’m just sick to death of lairds and that ... and if you want -to know, I’m heir-apparent to Munroe of Auchenballoch,” and he laughed -angrily. - -“You’re a lucky chap then ... Auchenballoch is a very fine place,” said -Rory in an even voice. - -“What’s up?” said Guy. - -“I seem to have annoyed Mr. Munroe, quite unintentionally,” answered Rory. - -Slowly, painfully, David blushed under his dark skin. - -“I beg your pardon,” he murmured. - -Teresa felt a sudden wave of intense sympathy for David, and of equally -intense annoyance against Rory; he had, doubtless, been again babbling -about his relations—“old Lionel Fane,” “the beautiful Miss Brabazons,” -and the rest of them—that was boring enough, in all conscience; but -if, as was probably the case, David had been left pointedly out of the -conversation, it would become, into the bargain, insulting. - -And under his easy manners, Rory was so maddeningly -patronising—especially to David, with his, “I say! Dashing fellah!” and, -“Now then, Munroe, let’s see what _you_ can do.” But ... it was possible -that David’s irritation was primarily caused by far more vital things. -’Snice there, lying on his back, his tongue lolling out, his eyes glassy, -completely unconscious of the emotional storm raging above him, would -probably, if they could have been translated into his own language, have -understood David’s feelings better than Teresa and sympathised with them -warmly. - -“I’m rather tired—do take me home, Mr. Munroe,” said Teresa. - -He looked at her gratefully. - -For some minutes they walked in silence, both embarrassed, Teresa turning -over in her mind possible conversational openings. “You have been in -South Africa, haven’t you?” “Do you play golf?” - -But she could not get them out. - -What she said finally was, “What did you mean exactly last night when you -said to my mother that in times like the War one sees the star?” - -“I mean the Star of Bethlehem—they’re seasons of Epiphany,” he answered. - -“But how do you mean exactly?” - -“Just that ... the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.” He said -the words slowly, with gusto, as if to him they had not yet become -threadbare. “There were a lot of chaps converted to Catholicism during -the War,” he went on. - -“Were you?” - -“Yes.” - -He paused, and again they were silent. Then he said, “I was brought up -a Presbyterian, but I was never interested in that, I didn’t think of -religion at all. But during the War there were several chaps that were -Catholics in my regiment, and I used sometimes to go to mass with them, -or benediction, because it was quieter in there than anywhere else. -Then their padre began talking to me, and I saw that once you had taken -the plunge it was all shipshape and logical. But the plunge was the -thing—that seemed to me to take a lot of nerve and faith.” - -Again he paused, then went on in a lower voice, “Well, it was a wee -church, very old, in a village behind the lines, and one day mass was -being celebrated there, and just after the Consecration the gas gong and -klaxons sounded—that meant we had all to retire in double quick time -behind the gas zone. The priest wrapped up the Host in the corporals and -hurried off with the rest of us. When the scare was over and he went back -to the church—_the corporals were soaked in blood_.” - -The last words were said scarcely above a whisper. - -Well, there was no Protestant nonsense here; this was the Holy Mother -herself in all her crudity. - -Teresa had not the slightest idea what to say; and decided that she had -better say nothing at all. - -Yes, but it was not the bleeding corporals, really, that had done it. -She remembered a curious experience she had once had when waiting to be -fetched home in the car by her father from some Chelsea lodgings where -she had been spending a fortnight. Her box was packed, she was all ready -dressed for the drive; she had nothing to do but to wait in a little -valley sheltered from Time, out of the beat of the Recording Angel, -her old activities switched off, her new activities not yet switched -on. Then the practical relation between her and the shabby familiar -furniture suddenly snapped, and she looked at it with new eyes—the old -basket-chair, the horse-hair sofa, the little table on which was an -aspidistra in a pot—they were now merely arrangements of planes and -lines, and, as such, startlingly significant. For the first time she was -looking at them æsthetically, and so novel was the sensation that it felt -like a mystical experience. The Beatific Vision ... may it not be this -æsthetic vision turned on spiritual formula? A shabby threadbare creed -suddenly seen as something simple, solid, monumental? Tolstoy must have -been reared on the Gospels; but suddenly when he was already middle-aged -he thought he had made a discovery which would revolutionise the world; -and this was that one must love one’s neighbour as oneself. It was merely -that he had, so to speak for the first time seen the chairs and tables -æsthetically. Yes ... heliacal periods, when the star becomes visible. -Mr. Munroe had said that he had never before thought about religion at -all; and it was a mere chance that the room in which he first saw the -tables and chairs should be hung with crucifixes and Catholic prints. - -The bells had stopped ringing for evensong, the sun was very near -setting. Caroline, the donkey, gave tongue from the paddock of -Plasencia—a long, drawn-out wail prefacing a series of _ee-aws_. - -“That means rain,” said David. - -“Caroline sings nothing but Handel,” said Teresa, “a long recitative -before the _aria_.” - -For a few seconds David looked puzzled, and then threw back his head, -and, for the first time since he had been at Plasencia, laughed aloud. - -“That’s offly good,” he cried. - -But Caroline was not the only singer of Handel. As they crossed the -lawn, Jollypot could be heard singing to the cottage piano in the old -schoolroom, _For He shall feed His flock like a Shepherd_. - -Among the many traces of Protestantism that had clung to her was a -craving for hymns at dusk on Sundays; but being debarred from _Hymns -Ancient and Modern_ she had to fall back upon Handel. - -And _He_ shall _feed_ His _flock_ like a _she_-e-e-e-e-_perd_. - -Her small, sweet voice, like the silver hammer of a gnome, beat out the -words of the prophet, to which Handel’s sturdy melody—so square, so -steady on its feet—lent an almost insolent confidence. - -And _He_ shall _feed_ His _flock_ like a _she_-e-e-e-e-_perd_.... - -“Is that—is that the wee lady?” asked David, gently. - -Teresa nodded. - -They stood still and listened; Teresa was smiling, a little sadly: the -old optimists, Isaiah and Handel, had certainly succeeded in cozening -Jollypot’s papa; for on a living worth £200 a year and no private means -he had begotten seven daughters. Nevertheless, the little voice went on -unfalteringly. - -And _He_ shall _feed_ His _flock_ like a _she_-e-e-e-e-_perd_. - -David glanced at the slim, graceful young woman standing beside him, -looking gentler than she usually did, but still very remote. - -She, and Jollypot’s singing, and the scent of roses, and the great -stretch behind them of Sabbath-hushed English fields, brought back, -somehow or other, one of the emotions of his boyhood. Not being -introspective, he had never analysed it, but he knew that it was somehow -connected with a vague dissatisfaction with his lot, and with a yearning -for the “gentry,” and hence, because when he was a boy he thought they -were the same thing, a yearning also for the English. He remembered -how badly he had had it one Sunday morning when he had played truant -from the service in his father’s church, and had slunk into the “wee -Episcopalian chapel” in the grounds of the laird. The castle had been -let that summer to an English judge and his family, and the judge’s -“high-English” voice, monotonous, refined, reading the lessons in a sort -of chant, pronouncing _when_ as _wen_, and _poor_ as _paw_, had thrilled -him as the dramatic reading of his father had never done. Then some -years later he had slipped into evensong, and the glossy netted “bun” -at the nape of the neck of Miss Stewart (the laird’s daughter), and her -graceful genuflections at the name of Jesus had thrilled him in the same -way. Finally the emotion had crystallised into dreams of a tall, kind, -exquisitely tidy lady, with a “high-English” voice and a rippling laugh, -sitting in a tent during the whole of a June afternoon scoring at the -English game of cricket ... or at a school treat, standing tall and -smiling, her arms stretched out, her hands clasped in those of her twin -pillar, warbling: - - Oranges and lemons - Sing the bells of St. Clement’s, - -while under the roof of arms scampered the hot, excited children. - -Anyway, it was an emotion that gave him a strange, sweet nausea. - -As to Teresa; as if her mind had caught a reflection from his, she was -pondering the line: - - The ancient English dower of inward happiness. - -Wordsworth mourned it as a thing of the past; but had it ever been? Did -Jollypot possess it? Who could say. Certainly none of the rest of them -did. - - -7 - -David left early the next morning. Evidently from him, too, Concha had -received an invitation to a dinner and a play, for as they said good-bye -she said, “Well then, Thursday, 16th, at the Savoy—it will be _divine_.” - -Rory did not leave till after tea. - -Teresa’s offer of sleeping, owing to the shortage of rooms, in her -father’s dressing-room during the week-end, had been accepted, and Rory -had been put into her bedroom; when she went up to dress for dinner -on Monday night she had noticed, on going near the bed, a smell which -seemed familiar. Suddenly she realised that it was the smell of Rory’s -hair-wash—the housemaid had actually forgotten to change the sheets. - -Teresa had flushed, and her heart had begun to beat in an odd, fluttering -way; but she went down to dinner without ringing for the housemaid. - -When she came up for the night the smell was still there. She undressed, -and stood for some seconds by the bed, her eyes shut, her hands clenched; -and then, blushing crimson, all over her face and neck, and, flinging on -her dressing-gown, driven by some strange instinct, she flew to Concha’s -room. - -Concha’s light was out. She walked up to the bed and gently shaking her -said, “Concha! Concha! May I sleep with you? They’ve forgotten to change -the sheets on my bed.” - -“Sheets? What sheets?” said Concha in a sleepy voice. - -“In my room ... you know Captain Dundas has been sleeping there.” - -“Poor darling, how filthy! Get in,” and Concha, so as to leave room for -her, rolled over to one side. - -Τὸ συγγενές τοι δεινόν, close physical kinship is a mysterious thing; -for, however much they may think they dislike each other, it nearly -always entails what can only be called a bodily affection between the -members it unites. - -For instance, since Pepa’s death, Concha’s was the only plate Teresa -would not have shrunk from eating off, Concha’s the only clothes she -would not have shrunk from wearing. - -That night they fell asleep holding each other’s hands. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -1 - -The night that Teresa and Concha spent so affectionately in the same bed -had no effect on their relationship: Concha continued flinging herself, -angrily, violently, against Teresa’s stony stare. - -If they happened to be alone in the room when the post arrived and there -was a letter for Concha, she would read it through with knit brows, -exclaiming under her breath the while; then she would re-read it and, -laying it down, would gaze into the fire, apparently occupied with some -grave problem of conduct; finally, springing to her feet with an air of -having taken a final and irrevocable decision, she would violently tear -up the letter, and fling the fragments into the fire. - -The letter would probably be from her friend, Elfrida Penn, and may have -contained some slight cause for anxiety, as Elfrida was an hysterical -young woman and one apt to mismanage her love-affairs; but Teresa, -sitting staring at the comedy through half-closed eyes with fascinated -irritation, would be certain that the letter contained nothing but an -announcement of Paris models, or the ticket for a charity ball. - -Teresa felt like some one of presbyopic and astigmatic sight, doomed -to look fixedly all day long at a very small object at very close -quarters; and this feeling reached an unusual degree of exacerbation -on the day that Concha went up to London to dine with Rory Dundas. At -seven o’clock she began to follow every stage of her toilette; the bath -cloudy with salts, a bottle of which she was sure to have taken up in -her dressing-case; then the silk stockings drawn on—“oh _damn_ that -Parker! She’s sent me a pair with a ladder”; silk shift, stays, puffing -out her hair, mouth full of gilt hair-pins; again and again pressing -the bell till the chambermaid came to fasten up her gown; on with her -evening cloak and down into the hall where Rory would be standing waiting -in an overcoat, a folded-up opera hat in his hand, his hair very sleek -from that loathsome stuff of his—“Hulloooah!” “Hulloa! Hulloa! I say ... -_some_ frock!” and then all through dinner endless topical jokes. - -Oh it was unbearably humiliating ... and how she longed for Pepa: “Teresa -darling! You must be mad. He really _isn’t_ good enough, you know. I’m -sure he never opens a book, and I expect he’s disgustingly bloodthirsty -about the Germans. But if you really like him we must arrange -something—what a pity May-Week is such a long way off.” - -What _did_ she see in him? He was completely without intellectual -distinction; he had a certain amount of fancy, of course, but fancy was -nothing— - - Tell me where is Fancy bred? - _Not_ in the heart - _Nor_ in the head - -nearly all young Englishmen had fancy—a fancy fed by _Alice in -Wonderland_, and the goblin arabesques on the cover of _Punch_; a certain -romantic historical sense too that thrills to _Puck of Pook’s Hill_ and -the _Three Musketeers_—oh yes, and, unlike Frenchmen, they probably -all cherish a hope that never quite dies of one day playing Anthony to -some astonishingly provocative lady—foreign probably, passionate and -sophisticated as the heroine of _Three Weeks_, mysterious as Rider -Haggard’s _She_. But all that is just part of the average English -outfit—national, ubiquitous, undistinguished, like a sense of humour and -the proverbial love of fair play. - -Yes; their minds were sterile, frivolous ... _un-Platonic_—that was the -word for expressing the lack she felt in the emotional life of the Rorys, -the Ebens, and all the rest of that crew; un-Platonic, _because they -could not make myths_. For them the shoemaker at his last, the potter at -his wheel, the fishwives of the market-place, new-born babies and dead -men, never suddenly grew transparent, allowing to glimmer through them -the contours of a stranger world. For them Dionysus, whirling in his -frantic dance, never suddenly froze into the still cold marble of Apollo. - -Concha came back from her outing uncommunicative and rather cross. She -was evidently irritated by the unusual eagerness shown by the Doña with -regard to her coming dinner with David Munroe. - - * * * * * - -One day Anna tackled Teresa over the doctrine of Transubstantiation. - -“I’ve never believed in fairies and things,” she said, “and this sounds -much more untruer—_is_ it true?” - -Teresa looked at her square, sensible little face—though without the -humour, so ridiculously like Harry’s in shape and expression—and her -heart sank. - -What _could_ she say? - -Einstein—Bergson—Unamuno ... their theories were supposed to provide a -loophole. - -She began to mutter idiotically: - - “Una—muno—mena—mo, - Catch a nigger by his toe.” - -“But is it true?” persisted Anna. - -“Darling, just give me a minute to think,” pleaded Teresa; and she set -about reviewing her own attitude to her faith. - -Whatever the confessors may say, Catholicism has nothing to do with dogma -... no, no, that’s not quite it, dogma is a very important element, but -in spite of not accepting it one can still be a Catholic. Catholicism -is a form of art; it arouses an æsthetic emotion—an emotion of -_ambivalence_; because like all great art it at once repels and attracts. -When people confronted her with its intellectual absurdities, she felt as -she did, when, at an exhibition of modern painting, they exclaimed: “but -whoever saw hands like _that_?” or “why hasn’t he given her a nose?” - -Of course, this peculiar æsthetic emotion is not to be found in every -manifestation of Catholicism—it has to be sought for; for instance, it is -in the strange pages at the beginning of Newman’s _Apologia_, where, in -his hushed emaciated English, he tells how, in his childhood in a remote -village, never having seen any of the insignia of Rome, when dreaming -over his lessons he would cover the pages of his copy-books with rosaries -and sacred hearts. And, when sitting one evening in the cemetery at -the bottom of the hill on which stands Siena, she had got the emotion -very strongly from the contrast between the lovely Tuscan country, the -magnificently poised city, the sinister black-cowled _confraternité_ that -was winding down the hill, each member carrying a lighted torch—between -all this and the cemetery itself where, among the wreaths of artificial -flowers, there was stuck up on each grave a cheap photograph of the -deceased in his or her horrible Sunday finery, with a maudlin motto -inscribed upon the frame. In the contrast too in Seville between Holy -Week, the pageantry of which is organised by the parish priests—a wooden -platform, for instance, carried slowly through the streets on which -stands the august _Jesùs de la Muerte_ flanked by two huge lighted -candles—and the Jesuit procession a few days later, in which Virgins -looking like _ballerinas_ and apostles holding guitars go simpering past -all covered with paper flowers. One can get it, too, from reading the -_Song of Solomon_ in the terse Latin of the Vulgate. - -It is an art steeped in a noble classical tradition which nevertheless -makes unerringly for what, outside the vast tolerance of art, would be -considered vulgar and hideous—chromo-lithographs, blood, mad nuns. This -classical tradition and this taste for the tawdry are for ever pulling -against each other, and it is just this conflict that gives it, as art, -its peculiar _cachet_. - -This was all very fine; but it would not do for Anna. - -“Darling, do you think it matters about a thing being true, as long as -it’s ... and, anyway, what exactly do we mean when we say a thing is -true?” - -“I don’t know what you mean,” said Anna fretfully, “do _you_ believe that -the clergyman turns that bread into Jesus Christ?” - -After a second’s hesitation Teresa braced herself and answered, “Yes.” - -“Well, anyway, Daddy doesn’t, I’m sure and,” Anna lowered her voice, “I’m -sure Mummie didn’t either.” - -“Well, darling, you know no one is going to _force_ you to believe it—you -can do exactly what you like about it.” - -Then Anna trotted off into the garden and Teresa sat on, thinking. - -How was she going to cope with Pepa’s children? - -These counter-influences—Plasencia and Cambridge—one continually undoing -the work of the other, were so very bad for them. Childhood was a -difficult enough time without that. - -She remembered the agony of her own struggle to free herself from -the robe of Nessus, woven by suggestion, heredity, and imperfectly -functioning faculties; was she yet free from the robe? Anyhow, it was -better now than in that awful world of childhood—a world, as it were, -at the bottom of the sea: airless, muted, pervaded by a dim blue light -through which her eyes strained in vain to see the seaweeds and shells -and skulls in their true shape and colour; a world to which noises from -the bright windy land above would from time to time come floating down, -muffled and indistinct—voices of newspaper boys shouting “Death of Mr. -Gladstone! Death of Mr. Gladstone!” Snatches of tunes from _San Toy_; -bells ringing for the relief of Mafeking. - - -2 - -September turned into October; the apples grew redder and the fields—the -corn and barley gradually being carted away to be stacked in barns—grew -plainer, severe expanses of a uniform buff colour, suggesting to Teresa -the background of a portrait by Velasquez. - -The children were going back to Cambridge; and their excitement at the -prospect might have convinced the Doña, had she been open to conviction, -that their life there was not an unhappy one. - -They were sorry to leave the Doña and Teresa and ’Snice and the -garden—that went without saying; but the prospect of a railway journey -was sufficient to put Jasper, who never looked very far ahead, into a -state of the wildest excitement, and the occasional nip in the air during -the past week had given Anna an appetite for the almost forgotten joys of -lessons, Girl-Guides, the “committee” organised by a very grand friend -of twelve for collecting money for the _Save the Children_ Fund (one was -dubbed a member of the committee with the President’s tennis-racket and -then took terrible oaths of secrecy), and soon Christmas drawing near, -when Nanny would take them down to brilliantly lighted Boots, with its -pleasant smell of leather and violet powder, to choose their Christmas -cards. - -Teresa knew what she was feeling; it was a pleasant thought, all the -small creatures hurrying eagerly back from sea or hills or valleys all -over the kingdom—tiny Esquimaux swarming back from their isolated summer -fisheries to the civic life of winter with its endless small activities, -so ridiculous to the outside world, so solemn, and so terribly important, -to themselves. - - * * * * * - -Shortly after they had reached Cambridge Teresa got the following letter -from Harry Sinclair: - - “DEAR TERESA,—Since his return from Plasencia Jasper has been - demanding a cake that turns into a man. - - “At first I supposed I had told him about those gingerbread - dragoons that old Positivist Jackson used to bring us when we - were children at Hastings. - - “I was mistaken. - - “I discover from Anna what he wanted was ‘the true, real, and - substantial presence of the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, - together with His Soul and Divinity, in the most holy sacrament - of the Eucharist.’ - - “Now, look here, Teresa, I won’t stand it. If I notice any - further morbid cravings in Jasper for water, bread, wine, or - oil, I shall stop his visits to Plasencia. - - “It really is insufferable—and you know quite well that Pepa - would have objected as much as I do. - - “Yrs. - - “H. J. S.” - -It only made Teresa laugh; she knew how Harry must have enjoyed writing -it—could see him jumping on to his bicycle and hurrying down to the -University Library to verify in one of the books of the late Lord Acton -the definition of Transubstantiation. - -Unfortunately she left it lying about; and it fell into the hands of -the Doña, whom Teresa found in the act of reading it, with set face and -compressed lips. - -At the bottom of her heart the Doña attached as little importance to it -as Teresa had done: the fact of its having been written to Teresa and -not to herself marked it as being nothing more than a harmless and half -facetious means of relieving his feelings; besides, she knew that to -sever all connection with Plasencia would be too drastic a step—involving -too many complications, too many painful scenes—also, too dramatic a step -to be taken by Harry in cold blood. - -But there are very few people who have the strength and poise of -intellect to resist, by an honest scrutiny of facts, the exquisite -pleasure of thinking themselves despitefully used by their enemy—very few -too who can resist the pleasure of avenging this despiteful usage on a -third and, to the vulgar eye, quite innocent person. - -The human soul requires for the play that is its hidden life but a tiny -cast; and to provide parts for its enormous company it falls back upon -the device of understudies, six or seven sometimes to one part. When this -is properly understood the use of the scapegoat will seem less unjust. - -Anyhow, the Doña chose to pretend to herself that she took Harry’s letter -seriously; and Dick was chosen as the scapegoat. - -There is prevalent in Spain a system of barter with the Deity, the -contracts entered into being of the following nature: If God (or the -Virgin or Saint ...) will make _Fulano_ faithful to _Fulana_, _Fulana_ -will not enter a theatre for a month; _or_ if God will bring little -Juanito safely through his operation for adenoids, _Fulano_ will try to -love his mother-in-law. - -As a result of Harry’s letter the Doña entered into such a contract: her -Maker was to ensure the ultimate saving of her grandchildren’s souls; -while her part of the bargain affected Dick and, incidentally, was -extremely agreeable to herself. - -In her bedroom an identical little comedy was enacted on two separate -nights. On its being repeated a third time, Dick burst out angrily: -“Oh, very well then ... it’s a bit ... no one could say I bothered you -much nowadays.... I know—that damned priest has had the impertinence to -interfere in my affairs.... I suppose ... I won’t ... _very_ well, then!” - -If it had not been dark he would have seen that the Doña’s eyes were -bright and shining with pleasure. - -For hours he lay awake; a hotch-potch of old grievances boiling and -seething in his mind. - -Always him, always him, giving in every time: that summer years ago when -he had given up golf and Harlech to take them all to Cadiz instead—_very_ -few men would have done that! And if they were going to a play always -letting one of the children choose what it was to be—and jolly little -gratitude he got for it all! _Jolly_ little! Snubbed here, ignored there -... glimpses he had had of other homes came into his head: “hush, dear, -don’t worry father”; “now then, Smith, _hurry! hurry!_ The master must -not be kept waiting”; “all right, dear, all right, there’s _plenty_ of -time.... Gladys dear, just run and fetch your father’s pipe.... Now, -Charlie, where’s father’s overcoat? Good-bye darling, I’ll go to the -Stores myself this morning and see about it for you ... good-bye, dear, -don’t tire yourself ...” whereas here it was: “Well, Dick; I really don’t -see how you _can_ have the car this morning—Arnold wants it and he’s so -seldom here....” Arnold! Arnold! Arnold! Oh what endless injustice that -name conjured up! Actually it was years since they had had Welsh rarebit -as a savoury because Arnold had once said the smell made him feel sick -... and oh, the cruelty and injustice on that birthday when the Doña with -an indulgent smile had asked him what he would like for dinner (damn her -impertinence—as if it wasn’t his own house and his own food and his own -money!), and he had chosen ox-tail soup, sole, partridge, roly-poly and -marrow-bones—ox-tail soup had been “scrapped” because Arnold didn’t like -it, sole because they’d had it the night before, roly-poly because Arnold -said it wasn’t a dinner-sweet. As to the marrow-bones—they had not been -“scrapped,” indeed, but as every one knows, a dish of marrow-bones is -a lottery, and he, Dick, the Birthday King, had drawn a blank—a hollow -mockery, in which a tiny Gulliver might have sat dry and safe, not a -single drop of grease falling on his wig or his broadcloth. But Arnold’s -had been a lordly bone, dropping at first without persuasion two or three -great blobs of semi-coagulated amber, and then yielding to his proddings -the coyer treasures of its chinks and crannies, what time he had cried -triumphantly, “More toast, please, Rendall!” And the Doña had watched -him with a touched and gratified smile, as if she were witnessing for -the first time the incidence of merit and its deserts. And it was not -merely that the unfilial Arnold had wallowed in grease, not offering -out of his abundance one slim finger of sparsely besmeared toast to his -dry and yearning father, but the Doña had not cast in his direction one -glance of pity—and it was his birthday, too!... _oh_ that Arnold! Who was -it ... Harry or Guy ... anyway he had heard some one saying that every -father feels like a Frankenstein before a grown-up son ... well, not -many of them had as much cause as he had ... despised, snubbed whenever -he opened his mouth. Oh damn that Arnold! In what did he consider his -great superiority to lie? Curious thing how his luck had always been so -bad: he had not got into the Fifteen at Rugby because he had put his knee -out—so he _said_; he had failed to get a scholarship at Trinity because -his coach had given him the wrong text-book on constitutional history—so -he _said_; he had only got a second in his tripos, because the Cambridge -school of history was beneath contempt—so he _said_. And then the War -and all the appalling fuss about him—really, one would have thought he -was fighting the Germans single-handed! And Dick, creeping about with -his tail between his legs and being made to feel a criminal every time -he smiled or forgot for a second that Arnold was in the trenches ... -and, anyhow, if he had been so wonderful, why hadn’t he the V.C., or _at -least_ the Military Cross? - -_Arnold was a fraud_ ... and a damned impertinent one! Well, it was his -mother’s fault ... mothers were Bolsheviks, yes, _Bolsheviks_—by secret -propaganda begun in the nursery setting the members of a family against -their head. He was nothing to his children—_nothing_. - -Just for a second he got a whiff of the sweet, nauseating, vertiginous, -emotion he had experienced at the birth of each of them in turn—an -emotion rather like the combined odours of _eau de Cologne_ and -chloroform; an emotion which, like all the most poignant ones, had a -strong flavouring of sadism; for it sprang from the strange fierce -pleasure of knowing that the body he loved was being tortured to bear his -children. - -Yes, he had loved her ... there had been times ... well, was he going to -put up with it for ever? _Oh_, how badly he had been used. - -Then it would all begin over again. - -Finally he came to a resolution, the daring of which (such is the force -of habit) half frightened him, while it made _his_ eyes in their turn -bright and shining with pleasure. - - -3 - -The fire of October, which had first been kindled in a crimson semicircle -of beeches burning through a blanket of mist on the outskirts of -Plasencia, spread, a slow contagion, over all the land. The birch -saplings in the garden became the colour of bracken. The border was gold -and amethyst with chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies. And in the -fields there lingered poppies, which of all flowers look the frailest, -yet which are the last to go. - -Imperceptibly, the breach widened between Teresa and Concha; Concha -had now completely given up pretending that their relationship was an -affectionate one, and they rarely spoke to each other. - -It was evident, too, that the lack of harmony between their parents, -noticeable since Pepa’s death, had recently become more pronounced. - -Dick was often absent for days at a time; and one day Teresa happening -to go into the Doña’s morning-room found her sitting on the sofa looking -angry and troubled, a letter on her lap. Teresa took the letter—the Doña -offering no protest—and read it. I was a bill to Dick from a London -jeweller for a string of pearls. Puzzled, she looked questioningly at the -Doña, who merely shrugged her shoulders. - - * * * * * - -In the servant’s hall, too, there seemed to be discord, rumours of which -drifted upstairs _via_ Parker the maid, Parker had a way of beginning in -the middle, which made her plot difficult to follow, but which perhaps -had a certain value as a method of expressing such irrational things as -the entanglement of primitive emotions. Her stories were like this: “And -she said: ‘see you don’t get Minchin in the garden,’ and Mrs. Rudge said, -‘oh then some one else’s name would be Walker’; and I said, ‘if Dale -hadn’t been killed in the War _he_ would be in your cottage and that’s -what the War has done for _you_!’ and I said, ‘you’ve children, Mrs. -Rudge,’ I said, ‘and I hope it won’t come knocking at _your_ door some -day,’ and Lily said, ‘trust Parker to be after an unmarried man,’ and I -said, ‘don’t be so rude, Lily, it’s Nosey Parker yourself ... even though -I don’t go to chapel!’ That was one for Mrs. Rudge, you see: oh, they’re -a set of beauties!” - -The previous head-gardener, Dale, for whom the middle-aged Parker had -had a _tendresse_, had been killed in the War. She looked askance -at his successor Rudge for wearing dead men’s shoes, and for being -that unpardonable thing—a married man; and into the bargain he was a -dissenter. Then there was Minchin, the handsome cowman, whom Dick was -thinking of putting into the garden.... - -It was all very complicated; but seeing that light is sometimes -thrown on the psychology of the hyper-civilised by the researches of -anthropologists among Bantus and Red Indians, perhaps these tales of -Parker deserved a certain attention—at any rate, behind them there loomed -three tremendous forces: sex, religion and the dead.... - - * * * * * - -One day, to the surprise of every one but the Doña, there arrived in time -for dinner Dick’s dearest friend, Hugh Mallam. - -He was a huge shaggy creature, if possible, more boyish than Dick. -He and Dick were delighted at seeing each other, for Hugh lived in -Devonshire and rarely came as far north as Plasencia, and all through -dinner plied each other with old jokes and old memories; and from the -roars of laughter that reached the drawing-room after they had been left -to themselves they were evidently enjoying themselves extremely over -their port wine. - -The next morning Teresa coming into the morning-room, found the Doña and -Hugh standing before the fire, the Doña looking angry and scornful while -Hugh, in an instructive and slightly irritated voice, was saying: “Sorry, -Doña, but I _can’t_ help it ... I can’t help being the same sort of -person with Dick that I’ve always been ... it’s like that ... I know it’s -very wrong of him and all that, but I can’t help being the same sort of -person with him I’ve always been ... I....” - -“Yes, yes, Hugh, you’ve said that before. But do you realise what a -serious thing it is for me and the children? You _seemed_ very shocked -and sympathetic in your letter—for one thing, a family man simply can’t -afford to spend these sums; then there’s the scandal—so bad for the -business and Arnold ... and you promised me yesterday....” - -“I know, but I tell you, as soon as I saw old Dick I knew that I couldn’t -lecture him, one can’t change.... _I can’t help being the same sort of -person with him I’ve always been._ But I really am most awfully sorry -about it all—the old blackguard!” - -“Well, if you hear that we are ruined, perhaps you’ll be sorrier still.” - -“That won’t happen—no tragedies ever happen to any one who has anything -to do with me—ha! ha! They couldn’t, could they, Teresa? I’m much too——” - -“Hush!” said the Doña sharply, suddenly noticing the presence of Teresa; -and, with a look of extreme relief, Hugh slunk through the French window -into the garden. - -So the Doña had actually been trying to turn Hugh into their father’s -mentor! It was not like her; she was much too wise not to know that the -incorrigibly frivolous Hugh was quite unsuited to the part. - -Parallel with the infallible wisdom that is the fruit of our own personal -experience, there lie the waste products of the world’s experience—facile -generalisations, _clichés_, and so on. Half the follies of mankind are -due to forming our actions along this line instead of along the other. -There, Dick and Hugh were not two human beings, therefore unique and -inimitable, but ‘old school friends’—and to whose gentle pressure back to -the narrow way is one more likely to yield than to that of an ‘old school -friend’? - -But the very fact of the wise Doña acquiescing in such a stale fallacy, -told of desperation and the clutching at straws. - -Of course, Hugh was perfectly right—the shape and colour of his -relationship with Dick had been fixed fifty years ago at the dame’s -school in Kensington, to spring up unchanged all through the years at -each fresh meeting. They could not change it; why, you might as well go -and tell an oak that _this_ spring it was to weave its leaves on the loom -of the elms. - -He had been right, too, in saying there would be no catastrophe. -The fate of Pompeii—a sudden melodramatic blotting out of little -familiar things—would never, she felt sure, overtake Plasencia. Things -at Plasencia happened very slowly, by means of a long series of -anticlimaxes. - - -4 - -As they sat on the loggia that afternoon reading their letters after tea, -Concha suddenly exclaimed, “Well I’m _blessed_!” and laying down her -letter began to laugh. - -“Well?” said the Doña. - -“It’s that excellent David Munroe!” - -“What about him?” - -“He writes to say that he’s chucking business and everything, and is -going at once into a seminary to prepare for ordination—it seems too -comical!” - -The Doña’s expression was one of mingled disappointment and interest; -while Jollypot’s cheeks went pink with excitement. They began to press -Concha for details. - -As to Teresa—somehow or other it gave her a disagreeable shock. - -Of course, every year hundreds of young men all over the world had a -vocation, went to a seminary, and, in due time, said their first mass—she -ought to be used to it; nevertheless, she felt there was something ... -something unnatural in the news: a young man who had business connections -with her father, and gave Concha dinner at the Savoy, and danced to -the gramophone—and then, suddenly hearing this ... she got the same -impression that she did in Paris from a sudden vision of the white -ghostly minarets of the Sacré-Cœur, doubtless beautiful in themselves, -but incongruous in design, and associations, and hence displeasing in -that gray-green, stucco, and admirably classical city. - -The others drifted off to their various business, and Teresa sat on, -looking at the view. - -It was one of these misty October days when every landscape looks so -magnificent, that, given pencil, brush, and the power of copying what -one sees, it almost seems that any one, without going through the -eclectic process of creation, could paint a great picture. The colours -were blurred as if the intervening atmosphere were a sheet of bad glass; -and the relationship between the old rose of ploughed fields, the yellow -strips of mustard, and the brighter gold and pink of the sunflowers, -chrysanthemums, and Michaelmas daisies in the border, made one think of -an oriental vase painted with dim blossoms and butterflies in which is -arranged a nosegay of bright and freshly plucked flowers—the paintings on -the porcelain melting into the flowers, the flowers vivifying the colours -on the porcelain. - -That is what the relationship between life and art should be like, she -thought, art the nosegay, life the porcelain vase. - -Life could not be shot on the wing—it must first be frozen.... Myths -that simplified and transposed so that things became as the chairs and -sofa had been that day in her Chelsea lodgings ... heliacal periods ... -Apollo and Dionysus ... it was all the same thing. If only she could find -it, life at Plasencia had some design, some plot ... yes, that was it—a -_plot_ that enlarged and simplified things so that they could be seen. - -What was life at Plasencia like? A motley hostile company sailing -together in a ship as in Cervantes’s _Persiles_? - -No; it still had roots; night and day it still stared at the same view; -externally, it was immobile. It was more like a convent than a ship, an -ill-matched company forced to live together under one roof, which one and -all they long to leave. - -A sense of discomfort came over her at the word “convent”: long bare -corridors hung with hideous lithographs; hard cold beds; shrewish -vulgar-tongued bells summoning one to smoked fish; an insipid -calligraphy; “that by the intercession of Blessed Madeleine Sophie -Barat, Virgin, through her devotion to thy Sacred Heart” ... it certainly -had _ambivalence_—it was the great Catholic art she had tried to define -to herself when confronted with doubting Anna; but it was not Plasencia. - -“Nunnery” was a better word, a compact warm word, suggesting hives and -the mysterious activities of bees ... it had an archaic ring too ... yes, -art always exists in the past (if not why is the present tense never -used?)—it is the present seen as the past. - -A nunnery, then, long ago—Boccaccio’s Fiammetta, as a full-blown -carnation splits its calyx, her beauty bursting through her novice’s -habit, receiving in the nunnery parlour all the amorous youth of Naples. -And yet it was not the same as if she had received them in a boudoir -of the world. The nunnery’s rule might be lax but it remained a rule; -and that, artistically, was of very great value—vivid earthly passion -seen against the pale tracery of Laud, Nones, Vespers. And at Plasencia -too—out there in the view life was enacted against a background of Hours: -_ver_, _aetas_, _autumnus_, _hiems_—to call them by their Latin names -made them at once liturgical. - -A nunnery, long ago ... where? Not in Italy; for that would be out of -harmony with the colour scheme of Plasencia—not so with Spain, from the -stuff of which they were knit, so many of them. A Spanish play (because -a play is the best vehicle for a plot) much more brightly coloured than -Plasencia, “Cherubimic,” as manuscripts illuminated in very bright -colours used to be called ... the action not merely in Spain, but in -their own Seville ... Moorish Seville ... hence a play, written like the -letters to Queen Elizabeth from eastern potentates, “on paper which doth -smell most fragrantly of camphor and ambergris, and the ink of perfect -musk.” - -And the plot? Well, that was not yet visible; but the forces behind it -would be sex, religion, and the dead. - - -5 - -October turned into November. At first some belated chrysanthemums, -penstemmons, and gentians, kept the flag of the border gallantly flying; -then Rudge cut it down to the bare wood of stalks a few inches high, -which showed between them the brown of the earth. - -Out in the country, for a time, a pink and gold spray of wild briar -garlanded here and there the thorny withered hedges; and then their only -ornament became the red breast of an occasional robin, his plump body -balanced on his thin hairy legs, which were like the stalks of the tiny -Cheshire pinks that one sees in rock gardens. - -Everywhere the earth was becoming depalliated and self-coloured; and on -one of her walks Teresa came upon a pathetic heap of feathers. - -In autumn the oriflamme of the spectrum had been red; now it was blue—a -corrugated iron roof, for instance. And soon the whole land was wintry -and blue; a blue not of vegetation but of light, light, which lay in -hollows like patches of blue-bells, which glinted along the wet surface -of the high road, turning it into an azure river upon which lay, like -yellow fritillaries, the golden dung dropped by calves led to market; and -through the golden birches the view, too, lay delicate and blue. - -Then black and white days would come, when the sun looked like the moon, -and a group of trees like a sketch in charcoal of a distant city. - - * * * * * - -There was nothing new at Plasencia: Dick still sulked at meals; the -Doña’s face was cold and set; Concha was _distraite_ and went a great -deal to London; Parker complained of the Rudges; only Jollypot and ’Snice -went their ways in an apparently unclouded serenity. - -Teresa was absorbed by a weekly parcel of books from the London Library; -charming mediæval books in that pretty state of decomposition when -literature is turning into history and has become self-coloured, the -words serving the double purpose of telling a tale and of illuminating -it with small brightly coloured pictures, like the toys in the pack of -Claudel’s Saint Nicholas:— - - Il suffit que j’y fasse un trou et j’y vois des choses vivantes et - toutes petites - Le Déluge, le Veau d’Or, et la punition des Israélites.... - -Of Seville she already knew enough to serve her purpose, having several -years before, during a winter she had spent there with her mother’s -sister, gone every morning to the University to read in the public -library; and, as it contains but few books of later date than the -eighteenth century, she had read there many a quaint work on the history -and customs of old Seville. And, fascinated by its persistent Moorish -past, she had dipped a little into the curious decorative grammar of the -Arabs, in which, so it seemed to her, infinitives, and participles, and -adjectives, are regarded as variations of an ever-recurring design of -leaf or scroll in a vast arabesque adorning the walls of a mosque. - -Looking over the notes she had made at that time, under the heading -_Spanish Chestnuts_ she came upon two little fables she had written on -the model of the Arab apologues which were circulated during the Middle -Ages all over Spain; and, with the dislike of waste that is so often a -characteristic of the artist, she decided that, if it were possible, she -would make use of them in the unwritten play. - -Like every other visitor to Seville she had been haunted by that strange -figure, more Moor than Christian, Pedro the Cruel; for, materially and -spiritually, his impress is everywhere on the city—there are streets that -still bear the names of his Jewish concubines, the popular ballads still -sing of his justice, his cruelty, and his tragic death; while his eternal -monument is the great Moorish palace of the Alcazar within whose walls -Charles-Quint himself, though his home was half of Europe, remained ever -an alien—it is still stained by his blood, and in its garden, through the -water of her marble bath, the limbs of his love, Maria Padilla, still -gleam white to the moon. - -So it was natural that she should fix upon his reign as the period of -the play; and hence, though she read promiscuously the literature of the -Middle Ages, her focus was the fourteenth century. - -All the same, she had qualms. Might she not “queer her pitch” by all -this reading? A sense of the Past could not be distilled from a mass of -antiquarian details; it was just because the Present was so rank with -details that, by putting it in the Past, she was trying to see it clean -and new. A sense of the Past is an emotion that is sudden, and swift, -and perishable—a flash of purple-red among dark trees and bracken as one -rushes past in a motor-car, and it is already half a mile behind before -one realises that it was rhododendrons in full flower, and had one had -time to explore the park one would have found its acres of shade all -riddled with them, saturated with them. An impression like this is not to -hold or to bind. And yet ... she had seen a picture by Monticelli, called -_François I. et les dames de sa cour_, of which the thick flakes of dark, -rich colour, if you but stood far enough away, glimmered into dim shapes -of ladies in flowered silks and brocades, against a background of boscage -clustering round a figure both brave and satyr-like—the king. Something -dim and gleaming; fragmentary as De Quincey’s dream. - -“Often I used to see a crowd of ladies, and perhaps a festival and -dances. And I heard it said, or I said to myself, ‘These are English -ladies from the unhappy time of Charles I.’ The ladies danced and looked -as lovely as the Court of George IV., yet I knew, even in my dream, that -they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries.” - -_Yet I knew, even in my dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly -two centuries_—yes, that was it. You must make your readers feel that -they are having a waking vision; and your words must be “lonely,” like -Virgil’s; they must be halting and fragmentary and whispered. - -Nevertheless she went on with her reading, and, as though from among the -many brasses of knights with which is inset the aisle of some church, -their thinly traced outlines blurred and rubbed by time and countless -feet, one particular one were slowly to thicken to a bas-relief, then -swell into a statue in the round, then come to life—gray eyes glittering -through the vizor, delicately chased armour clanking, the church echoing -to oaths in Norman-French,—so gradually from among the flat, uniform, -sleeping years of the Middle Ages did the fourteenth century come to life -in Teresa’s mind. - -Beyond the Pyrenees it was a period of transition—faith was on the wane. -She found a symbol of the age in Boccaccio’s vow made not at the shrine -of a saint, but at Virgil’s grave; not a vow to wear a hair-shirt or to -die fighting the Saracens, but to dedicate all his life to the art of -letters. And, when terrified by the message from the death-bed of Blessed -Pietro Pietroni, he came near to breaking his vow and falling backwards -into the shadows, in the humane sanity of Petrarch’s letter—making -rhetoric harsh and mysticism vulgar—she heard the unmistakable note of -the Renaissance. - -And in France, too, the writer of the second part of the _Roman de la -Rose_ has earned the title of “le Voltaire du moyen age.” - -But on the other side of the Pyrenees the echo of this new spirit was but -very faint. - -Shut in between the rock of Gibraltar and by these same Pyrenees sits Our -Lady of the Rocks, Faith ... alone; for heresies (Calvinism being the -great exception) are, Teresa came to see, but the turning away of the -frailer sisters, Hope and Charity, from the petrifying stare of their -Gorgon but most beautiful sister. - -But in those days, though as stern, she was a plainer Faith. It was not -till after the Council of Trent that she developed the repellent beauty -of a great picture: the tortured conversion of St. Ignatius de Loyóla, -the Greco-esque visions of Santa Teresa de Jesùs, the gloating grinning -crowd in the _Zocodover_ of Toledo lit up by the flames of an auto-da-fé -into one of the goblin visions of Goya, were still but tiny seeds, -broadcast and sleeping. Catholicism had not yet lost the monumental -austerity of the primitive Church; its blazon was still the Tree of the -Fall and the Redemption springing from Peter’s rock. - -But, all the time, the doctrine of Transubstantiation, woven by the -“angelic doctor” round the Sacrifice of the Mass, was slowly, surely -coming to its own, and Jehovah was turning into the Lord God of the Host. - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -1 - -Dr. Sinclair and the children, Guy, Rory, and, of course, Arnold, were to -spend Christmas at Plasencia. - -By tea-time on the twenty-third they had all arrived except Rory, who was -motoring down from Aldershot in his little “two-seater.” - -Harry Sinclair, a big massive brown man, his fine head covered with -crisp curls, was standing on the hearth-rug devouring hunks of iced -cake and, completely indifferent as to whether he had an audience or -not, was, in his own peculiar style—hesitating attacks, gropings for -the right word which, when found, were trumpeted, bellowed, rather than -uttered—delivering a lecture of great wit and acumen. - -The Doña and Arnold—he scowling heavily—were talking in low tones on the -outskirts of the circle; while Dick would eye them from time to time -uneasily from his arm-chair. - -The children—to celebrate their arrival—were having tea in the -drawing-room, and both were extremely excited. - -Anna’s passion for stamps was on the wane, and she no longer dreamed of -Lincoln’s album so bulgy that it would not shut. She was now collecting -the Waverley Novels in a uniform edition of small volumes, bound in hard -green board and printed upon India paper; and following some mysterious -sequence of her own that had nothing to do with chronology, she had “only -got as far as the _Talisman_.” She was wondering if there was time -before Christmas Day to convey to the Doña—very delicately of course—in -what directions her desires now lay. - -“The ... er ... chief merit of Shakespeare is that he is so ... er ... -admirably ... er ... PROSAIC. The qualities we call prosaic exist only in -verse, and _vice versa_....” (“How funny!” thought Anna, both pleased and -puzzled, “Daddy is talking about _Vice Versa_.” She was herself just then -in the middle of Anstey’s _Vice Versa_.) “For instance ... er ... the -finest fragments of Sappho are ... er ... merely an ... er ... UNADORNED -STATEMENT OF FACTS! Don’t you agree, Cust?” - -This purely rhetorical appeal elicited from Guy a shrieking summary of -his own views on poetry; Harry’s eyes roving the while restlessly over -the room, while now and then he gave an impatient grunt. - -In the meantime tea and cake were going to Jasper’s head. He began to -wriggle in his chair, and pretend to be a pig gobbling in a trough. As -the grown-ups were too occupied to pay any attention, it was Anna who had -to say: “Jasper! _Don’t_ be silly.” - -But he was not to be daunted by Anna; drawing one finger down the side -of his nose he squealed out in the strange pronunciation he affected -when over-excited: “Play Miss Fyles-Smith come down my nose!” (Miss -Fyles-Smith, it may be remembered, was the “lady professor” who sometimes -worked with Dr. Sinclair.) - -The Doña stopped suddenly in the middle of something she was saying to -Arnold, raised her _lorgnette_, and looked at Harry; he was frowning, -and, with an impatient jerk of the head, turned again to Guy: “Well, as I -was saying, Cust....” - -It might, of course, be interpreted quite simply as merely momentarily -irritation at the idiotic interruption. - -“You see,” began Anna in laborious explanation, “he pretends that there’s -a real Miss Fyles-Smith and a pretence one, and the pretence one is -called ‘play Miss Fyles-Smith,’ and whenever he gets silly he wants -people to come down his nose, and....” - -Then there was a laugh in the hall, discreetly echoed by Rendall the -butler. - -“Hallo! That’s Rory,” said Concha, and ran out into the hall. - -Teresa felt herself stiffening into an attitude of hostile criticism. - -“Here he is!” - - * * * * * - -First entry of the _jeune premier_ in a musical play: - -“Well, guuurls, here we are again,” while the Beauty Chorus crowds round -him and he chucks the prettiest one under the chin. Then—bang! squeak! -pop! goes the orchestra and, running right up to the footlights, the -smirking chorus massed behind him, he begins half singing, half speaking: - - When I came back from sea - The guuurls were waiting for me. - -Well, at last it was over and he was sitting at a little table eating -muffins and blackberry jam. - -“What have I been doing, Mrs. Lane? Oh, I’ve been leading a blameless -life,” and then he grinned and, Teresa was convinced, _simultaneously_ -caught her eye, the Doña’s, Concha’s, and Jollypot’s. - -She remembered when they were children how on their visits to the -National Portrait Gallery, Jollypot used to explain to them that the only -test of a portrait’s having been painted by a great master was whether -the eyes seemed simultaneously fixed upon every one in the room; and they -would all rush off to different corners of the gallery, and the eyes -would certainly follow every one of them. The eyes of a male flirt have -the same mysterious ubiquity. - -“I do think it’s most extraordinary good of you to have me here for -Christmas. I feel it’s frightful cheek for such a new friend, but I -simply hadn’t the strength of mind to refuse—I _did_ so want to come. -I know I _ought_ to have gone up to Scotland, but my uncle really much -prefers having his goose to himself. He’s a sort of Old Father William, -you know, can eat it up beak and all.... Yes, the shops _are_ looking -jolly. I got stuck with the little car in a queue in Regent Street -the other day and I longed to jump out and smash the windows and loot -everything I saw. I say, Guy, you ought to write a poem about Christmas -shops....” - -“Well, as a matter of fact, it _is_ an amazing _flora_ and _fauna_,” -cried Guy, moving away from Harry and the fire: “Sucking pigs with -oranges in their mouths, toy giraffes ... and all these frocks—Redfern -mysteriously blossoming as though it were St. John’s Eve, the -wassail-bowl of Revell crowned with imitation flowers....” - -“Go it! Go it!” laughed Rory. - -“Oh Rory, it was too priceless—do you remember that exquisite _mannequin_ -at Revell’s, a lovely thing with heavenly ankles? Well, the other day I -was at the Berkeley with Frida and ...” and Concha successfully narrowed -his attention into a channel of her own digging. - -What energy to dig channels, to be continually on the alert, to fight! - -Much better, like Horace’s arena-wearied gladiator, to seek the _rudis_ -of dismissal. - -The Doña made a little sign to Arnold, and they both got up and left the -room, Dick suspiciously following them with his eyes. - -The talk and laughter like waves went on beating round Teresa. - -Now Guy was turning frantic glances towards her and talking louder and -more shrilly than usual—evidently he thought he was saying something -particularly brilliant, and wanted her to hear it. - -“Bergson seems to look upon the intellectuals as so many half-witted old -colonels, living in a sort of Bath, at any rate a geometrical town—all -squares and things, and each square built by a philosopher or school of -thought: Berkeley Square, Russell Square, Oxford Crescent....” - -“Well, the War did one good thing, at any rate, it silenced Bergson,” -said Harry impatiently, “I don’t think he has any influence now, but not -being er ... er ... a Fellow of KING’S, I’m not well up in what ... er -... the YOUNG are thinking.” - -“Oh well, here _are_ the young—you’d better ask ’em,” chuckled Dick, -since the departure of his wife and son, once more quite natural and -genial: “Anna, do you read Bergson?” - -“No!” she answered sulkily and a little scornfully—she liked the -“grown-ups” to pay her attention, but not _that_ sort of attention. - -“There you are, Harry!” chuckled Dick triumphantly; though what his cause -was for triumph must remain a mystery. - -“Quite right, old thing! I don’t read him either—much too deep for you -and me. What _are_ you reading just now?” said Rory, beckoning her to his -side. - -She at once became friendly again: “I’m reading _Vice Versa_,” and she -chuckled reminiscently, “And ... I’ve just finished the _Talisman_ ... -and I’d like to read _Kenilworth_.” - -What a pity the Doña was not there to hear! But perhaps one of them -would tell her what she had said, and she would guess. - -“Which do you like best, Richard Cœur de Lion or Richard Bultitude?” -asked Guy. - -“_Richard_ Bultitude!” laughed Rory scornfully, “Do you hear that, Anna? -He thinks the old buffer’s name was Richard! But we know better; _we_ -know it was Paul, don’t we?” - -Anna would have liked to have shared with Rory an appearance of superior -knowledge; but honesty forced her to say: “Oh but the little boy was -Richard Bultitude—Dickie, you know; his real name was Richard.” - -“There, Rory! There!” shouted Guy triumphantly. - -“Do you remember that girl’s—I can’t remember her name, that one that -shoots a _billet-doux_ at Mr. Bultitude in church—well, her papa, the -old boy that gave the responses all wrong ‘in a loud confident voice,’ -doesn’t he remind you rather of Uncle Jimmy?” said Rory to Guy. - -“The best character in ... er ... that book is the German master, who ... -er ...” began Harry. - -“Oh _yes_, a _heavenly_ creature—‘I veel make a leetle choke to agompany -it’!” shrieked Concha. - -“I hate Dulcie—I think she’s silly,” said Anna; but no one was listening -to her, they were launched upon a “grown-up” discussion of _Vice Versa_ -that might last them till it was time to dress for dinner ... a rosy -English company, red-mufflered, gaitered, bottle-green-coated, with -shrieks of laughter keeping the slide “boiling” in the neighbourhood of -Dingley Dell. - -Teresa, as usual, sitting apart, felt in despair—what could be done with -such material? A ceaseless shower of insignificant un-co-related events, -and casual, ephemeral talk ... she must not submit to the tyranny of -detail, the gluttony that wanted everything ... she must mythologise, -ruthlessly prune ... hacking away through the thick foliage of words, -chopping off the superfluous characters, so that at last the plot should -become visible. - -Anna, rather resenting that what she looked upon as a children’s book -should be commandeered by the grown-ups for their own silly talk in which -she could not share, went off to the billiard-room to play herself tunes -on the gramophone. - -Jasper had long since sneaked off with ’Snice for a second tea in the -kitchen. - -Then Guy left the group of Anstey amateurs and came and sat down beside -Teresa. - -“Have you been reading anything?” he asked; and without waiting for an -answer, and slightly colouring, he said eagerly: “I’ve been learning -Spanish, you know.” - -“Have you? Do you like it?” - -And that was all! How often had he rehearsed the conversation, or, -rather, the disquisition, that ought at this point to have arisen: “Those -who know the delicate sophistication of _Lazarillo de Tormes_ feel less -amazement when from an _Amadis_-pastoral Euphues-rotted Europe an urbane -yet compelling voice begins very quietly: ‘In a village of la Mancha, -the name of which I do not care to recollect, there lived not long ago a -knight’....” - -And surely she might have shown a little emotion—was it not just a little -touching that entirely for her sake he should have taken the trouble to -learn Spanish? - -“Well, what have you been reading in Spanish—the _Four Horsemen of the -Apocalypse_?” - -Though this was only a joke, he felt sore and nettled, and said sulkily: -“What’s that? I’ve never heard of it.” - -“You lie, Guy, you lie! You have heard of the _Four Horsemen of the -Apocalypse_, and you have heard of _If Winter Comes_; because from what -you tell me of your parents they probably talk of both incessantly, -and....” - -“You’re quite right, as a matter of fact,” laughed Guy, delighted that -she should remember what he had told her about the manners and customs -of his parents, “they talked of nothing else at one time. It made them -feel that at last they were able to understand and sympathise with what -my generation was after. My father began one night at dinner, ‘Very -interesting book that, Guy, _If Winter Comes_—very well written book, -very clever; curious book—painful though, painful!’ And my mother tried -to discuss some one called Mabel’s character with me. It was no good my -saying I hadn’t read it—it only made them despise me and think I wasn’t -_dans le mouvement_, after all.” - -“There, you see!” laughed Teresa; “Well, what _are_ you reading in -Spanish?” - -“Calderon’s _Autos_,” and then he launched into one of his excited -breathless disquisitions: “As a matter of fact, I was rather disappointed -at first. I knew, of course, that they were written in glorification of -the Eucharist and that they were bound to be symbolic, and ‘flowery and -starry,’ and all the rest of it—man very tiny in comparison with the sun -and the moon and the stars and the Cross—but the unregenerate part of -me—I suppose it’s some old childhood’s complex—has a secret craving for -_genre_. Every fairy story I read when I was a child was a disappointment -till I came upon Morris’s _Prose Romances_, and then at last I found -three dimensional knights and princesses, and a whole fairy countryside -where things went on happening even when Morris and I weren’t looking at -them: cows being milked, horses being shod, lovers wandering in lanes; -and one knew every hill and every tree, and could take the short cut from -one village to another in the dark. And I’d hoped, secretly, that the -_autos_ were going to be a little bit like that ... that the characters -would be at once abstractions—Grace, the Mosaic Law, and so on—_and_ at -the same time real seventeenth century Spaniards, as solid as Sancho -Panza, gossiping in taverns, and smelling of dung and garlic. But, of -course, I came to see that the real thing was infinitely finer—the -plays of a theologian, a priest who had listened in the confessional to -disembodied voices whispering their sins, and who kept, like a bird in -a cage, a poet’s soul among the scholastic traditions of his intellect, -so that gothic decorations flower all round the figure of Theology, as -in some Spanish Cathedral ...” he paused to take breath, and then added: -“I say—I thought you wouldn’t mind—but I’ve brought you for Christmas an -edition of the _Autos_—I think you’ll like them.” - -“Thank you ever so much, I should love to read them,” said Teresa with -unusual warmth. - -She had been considerably excited by what he had said. An _auto_ that was -at once realistic and allegorical—there were possibilities in the idea. - -She sat silent for a few seconds, thinking; and then she became conscious -of Harry’s voice holding forth on some topic to the group round the fire: -“... really ... er ... a ... er ... TRAGIC conflict. The one thing that -gave colour and ... er ... significance to her drab spinsterhood was -the conviction that these experiences were supernatural. The spiritual -communion ... the ... er ... er ... in fact the CONVERSATIONS with the -invisible ‘Friend’ became more and more frequent, and more and more -... er ... _satisfying_, and indeed of nightly occurrence. Then she -happened to read a book by Freud or some one and ... er ... THE FAT -WAS IN THE FIRE—or, rather, something that undergoes a long period of -smouldering before it breaks into flames was in the fire. Remember, she -was nearly fifty, and a Swiss Calvinist, but she had really _remarkable_ -intellectual pluck. Slowly she began to test her mystical experiences by -the theories of Freud and Co., and was forced in time to admit that they -sprang _entirely_ from ... er ... suppressed ... er ... er ... EROTIC -desires. I gather the modern school of psychologists hold all so-called -mystical experiences _do_. Leuba said....” - -Here Jollypot, who had been sitting in a corner with her crochet, a -silent listener, got up, very white and wide-eyed, and left the room. - -Teresa’s heart contracted. They were ruthless creatures, that English -fire-lit band—tearing up Innocence, while its roots shrieked like those -of a mandrake. - -But she had got a sudden glimpse into the inner life of Jollypot. - -Then she too, left the room; as for once the talk had been pregnant, and -she wanted to think. - -Sexual desires concealed under mystical experiences ... a Eucharistic -play. Unamuno said that the Eucharist owed its potency to the fact that -it stood for immortality, for life. But it was also, she realised, the -“bread not made of wheat,” therefore it must stand for the man-made -things as well—these vain yet lovely yearnings that differentiate him -from flowers and beasts, and which are apt to run counter to the life he -shares with these. The Eucharist, then, could stand either for life, the -blind biological force, or for the enemy of life—the dreams and shadows -that haunt the soul of man; the enemy of that blind biological force, -yes, but also its flower, because it grows out of it.... - - -2 - -The days of Christmas week passed in walks, dancing, and talk in the -billiard-room. - -On Christmas Day Rory had given Concha a volume of the Harrow songs with -music, and to the Doña an exquisite ivory hand-painted eighteenth-century -fan with which she was extremely pleased; indeed, to Teresa’s surprise, -he had managed to get into her good graces, and they had started a little -relationship of their own consisting of mock gallantry on his side and -good-natured irony on hers. - -As to Concha, she had taken complete possession of him and seemed to know -as much about his relations—“Uncle Jimmy,” “old Lionel Fane” and the rest -of them—as he did himself; she knew, too, who had been his fag at Harrow -and the names of all his brother officers; in fact, the sort of things -that, hitherto, she had only known about Arnold; and Arnold evidently was -not overpleased. - -One day a little incident occurred in connection with Arnold that touched -Teresa very much. Happening to want something out of her room she found -its entry barred by him and the Doña, she superintending, while he was -nailing on to the door a small piece of canvas embroidered with the -Sacred Heart of Jesus. - -“We won’t be a minute,” said the Doña serenely; and Arnold, scowling and -rather red, silently finished his job. By the end of the morning there -was not a room in the house that had not the Sacred Heart nailed on its -door. Dick being by this time too cowed to protest. - -Teresa knew how Arnold must have loathed it; but he evidently meant by -his co-operation to make it clear once and for all that he was on his -mother’s side in the present crisis as opposed to his father’s. - -In connection with the undercurrent of life at Plasencia, another little -scene is perhaps worth recording. - -“By the way, Guy,” said Rory, one morning they were sitting in the -billiard-room, “How are Uncle Roger and Aunt May getting on in Pau?” - -“Oh, same old thing—mother plays croquet and goes to the English Church, -and father plays golf and goes to the English Club. Sometimes they motor -over to Biarritz to lunch with friends—and that’s about all!” - -“Well, and a jolly good life too! That’s how _I’ll_ spend the winter when -I’m old, only I won’t go to Pau, I’ll go to Nice—there’s a better casino. -And what’s more, I’ll drag _you_ there, Guy. It would do him a lot of -good, wouldn’t it, Miss Lane?” and Rory grinned at Teresa, who, staring -at Guy critically through narrowed eyes, said: “I don’t think he’ll need -any dragging. I can see him when he’s old—an extremely _mondain_ figure -in white spats, constantly drinking tea with duchesses, and writing his -memoirs.” - -Guy looked at her suspiciously—Mallock, certainly, drank tea with -duchesses and wrote his memoirs; not a bad writer, Mallock! But probably -Teresa despised him; Swinburne had been a dapper _mondain_ figure in his -youth—what did she mean exactly? - -“Poor old Guy!” laughed Rory, “I can see him, too—a crusty old Tory, -very severe on the young and their idiotic poetry.... I expect you’re a -violent Socialist, Miss Lane, ain’t you?” - -Foolish, conventional young man, going round sticking labels on -every one! Well, so she was labelled “a Socialist,” and that meant -“high-browed,” and undesirable; But why on earth did she mind? - -Concha was looking at her with rather a curious little smile. She -sometimes had an uncomfortable feeling that Concha was as good at reading -_her_ thoughts as she was as reading Concha’s. - -“She is a Socialist like you, isn’t she, Guy?” persisted Rory. - -“He means an intellectual character,” explained Guy, not ill-pleased. - -“No, but you do want to blow us all up, don’t you?” - -“Do I?” said Teresa coldly. - -“Well, I believe I’m a Bolshevik myself, a revolution would be my only -chance of getting into the Guards. ‘Hell-for-leather Dundas of the Red -Guards!’ It sounds like a hero by ... that mad woman our mothers knew in -Florence, Guy—what was her name?... Yes, like a hero in a Ouida novel.” - -“Do I hear you say, Dundas, that you think yourself like one of ... er -... Ouida’s heroes?” said Harry Sinclair, coming in at that moment with -Dick. - -“Well, sir, modesty forbids me to say so in so many _words_,” grinned -Rory. - -“There used to be an aged don at Cambridge,” continued Harry, -“half-blind, wholly deaf, and with an ... er ... game ... LEG, and when -he was asked to what character in history he felt most akin he answered -... er ... er ‘ALCIBIADES’!” - -“That was old Potter, wasn’t it? I remember ...” began Dick, but Concha -interrupted him by exclaiming eagerly: “What a good game! Let’s play -it—history or fiction, but we mustn’t say our own, we must guess each -other’s’—Rory is settled, he thinks himself like a Ouida hero ...” and -she suddenly broke off, turned red, and looked at Teresa with that -glazed opaque look in her eyes, that with her was a sign of mingled -embarrassment and defiance. - -Teresa’s heart began to beat a little faster; who would Concha say she, -Teresa, thought herself like? And who would _she_ say Concha thought -herself like? It would perhaps be a relief to them both to say, for -once, things that were definitely spiteful—a relief from this continual -X-raying of each other’s thoughts, and never a word said. - -“Who does Guy think himself like? Some one very wicked and -beautiful—don’t you, Guy?” said Rory. - -“Dorian Gray!” said Arnold, looking up from his book with a meaning grin. - -“Oh no, no, I’m sure it’s some very literary character,” said Concha. - -“Shelley?” suggested Teresa; but she gave the little smile that always -seemed scornful to Guy. - -“Percy Bysshe ... is she right, Guy?” - -“No,” said Guy sulkily. - -“Shakespeare—Tennyson—Burns? Who, then?” - -“Oh, Keats if you like—when he was in love with Fanny Brawne,” cried Guy -furiously, and, seizing the book that lay nearest to him, he began to -read it. - -“I say, this _is_ a lovely game—almost as good as cock-fighting!” said -Rory: “What about Mr. Lane? I wonder who _you_ think you are like, sir.” - -Tactful young man, so anxious to make his host feel at home! - -Dick, who had been dreading this moment, looked sheepish. It seemed -to him that the forehead of every one in the room slid sideways like -a secret panel revealing a wall upon which in large and straggling -characters were chalked up the words: DON JUAN. And Teresa was saying to -herself: “Would it be vulgar ... should I dare to say Lydia Bennett? And -who will she say? Hedda Gabler?” - -She had forgotten what the game really was and had come to think it -consisted of telling the victim the character that you _yourself_ thought -they resembled. - -“Who does Mr. Lane think he’s like?” repeated Rory. - -“Drake, I should think,” said Guy, who never sulked for long. - -Dick felt unutterably relieved. - -“Is that right, sir?” - -“That will do—Drake if you like,” said Dick, with a laugh. - -“A Drake somewhat ... er ... cramped in his legitimate activities through -having ... er ... married an ... er ... SPANISH LADY,” said Harry. - -What the devil did he mean exactly by that? Surely the Doña hadn’t been -blabbing to him—Harry of all people! But she was capable of anything. - -“Oh yes, the Doña would see to it he didn’t singe the King of Spain’s -beard twice,” laughed Concha. - -Oh yes, of course, _that_ was it! He laughed aloud with relief. - -And then followed a discussion, which kept them busy till luncheon, as -to whether it could be proved by Mendelism that the frequent singeing -of Philip II.’s beard was the cause of his successors having only an -imperial. - -So here was another proof of the fundamental undramaticness of life as -lived under civilised conditions—for ever shying away from an emotional -crisis. As usual, the incident had been completely without point; and on -and on went the frivolous process of a piece of thistle-down blown by a -summer breeze hither, thither, nowhere, everywhere. - - -3 - -Before the party broke up there was a little dance at Plasencia. It was -to be early and informal so as not to exclude “flappers”; for, as is -apt to be the way with physically selfish men, Arnold found grown-up -young ladies too exacting to enjoy their society and preferred teasing -“flappers.” Fair play to him, he never flirted with them; but he -certainly liked them. - -So the drawing-room was cleared of furniture, a scratch meal of -sandwiches substituted for dinner, and by eight o’clock they were -fox-trotting to the music of a hired pianist and fiddler. - -The bare drawing-room, robbed of all the accumulated accessories of -everyday life, was the symbol of what was happening in the souls of the -dancers—Dionysus had come to Thebes, and, at the touch of his thyrsus, -the city had gone mad, had wound itself round with vine tendrils, was -flowing with milk and honey; where were now the temples, where the -market-place? - -Teresa, steered backwards and forwards by Bob Norton, felt a sudden -distaste for mediæval books—read always with an object; a sudden -distaste, too, for that object itself, which was riding her like a hag. -Why not yield to life, become part of it, instead of ever standing -outside of it, trying to snatch with one’s hands fragments of it, as it -went rushing by? - - Whirled round in life’s diurnal course - With rocks and stones and trees. - -That was good sense; that was peace. But away from Plasencia ... yes, one -must get away from Plasencia. - -For once, they were all beset by the same desire—to slip off silently one -night, leaving no trace. - -“Why shouldn’t I really get that yacht and slip off with Hugh ... to -Japan, say ... and no one know? It’s a free country and I’ve got the -money—there’s nothing to prevent me doing what I want. To sail right away -from Anna ... and ... and ... _every one_,” thought Dick, as, rather -laboriously, he gambolled round with the young wife of a rich stockbroker -who had a “cottage” near Plasencia. - -As to Concha—she had sloughed her own past and present and got into -Rory’s—she seemed to _be_ Rory: lying in his study at Harrow after -cricket sipping a water-ice, which his fag had just brought him from the -tuck-shop ... “hoch!” and a tiny slipper shoots up into the air—“the -beautiful Miss Brabazons,” the belles of the Northern Meeting!... -“H.M. the King and the Prince of Wales motored over from Balmoral for -the—Highland games. There were also present ...” flags flying, bands -playing ... hunting before the War—zizz! Up one goes—over gates, over -hedges ... no gates, no hedges, no twelve-barred gates of night and -day, no seven-barred gates of weeks, just galloping for ever over the -boundless prairie of eternity—far far away from Plasencia and them all. - -Only the dowagers, watching the dancers from a little conservatory off -the drawing-room, had their roots deep in time and space—a row of huge -stone Buddhas set up against a background of orchids and bougainvillea -and parroquet-streaked jungle, which were their teeming memories of the -past; but set up immovably, and they would see to it that no one should -escape. - -“There!” said Rory, gently pushing Concha into a chair, “where’s your -cloak?” - -“Don’t want one.” - -“Oh, you’d better. Which is your room? Let me go and fetch you one.” - -“But I tell you I don’t _want_ one!” - -“Oh, by the way, I meant to ask you, why did you walk on ahead with -Arnold this afternoon?” - -“Did I?” - -“Of course you did. I had to walk with your sister—she scared me to -death.” - -Then there was a pause. - -“Concha!” - -“Hallo!” - -He gave a little laugh, took her in his arms, and kissed her several -times on the mouth. - -“You didn’t kiss me back.” - -“Why should I?” - -“I don’t believe you know how to!” - -“_Don’t_ I?” - -He kissed her again. - -“What a funny mouth you’ve got—it’s soft like a baby’s.” - -“You’d better be careful—some one might come along, you know, at any -moment.” - -“Would they be angry?... You _are_ a baby!” - -“Rory! The music’s stopping.” - -Rory began talking in a loud voice: “Well, as I was saying, Chislehurst -golf is no good to me at all. I like a course where you have plenty of -room to open your shoulders.” - -“You _are_ a fool!” laughed Concha. - -The next dance was a waltz. - -“The _Blue Danube_! I’m _so_ glad the waltz is coming into fashion -again,” said Mrs. Moore, tapping her black-satin-slippered foot in time -to the tune, and watching her sixteen-year old daughter Lettice whirl -round with Arnold. - -“Yes,” said the Doña, “I’m fed up with rag-time.” - -“Dear Mrs. Lane, these slangy expressions sound so deliciously quaint -when you use them—don’t they, Lady Norton? And that reminds me, I’ve had -such a _killing_ letter from Eben....” - -But no one listened, and soon she too was silent; for, at the strains of -the _Blue Danube_, myriads of gold and blue butterflies had swarmed out -of the jungle and settled on the Buddhas. They still stared in front of -them impassively, they were still firm as rocks; but they were covered -with butterflies. - - Mais le vert paradis des amours enfantines - Les courses, les chansons, les baisers, les bouquets - Les violons vibrant derrière les collines, - Avec les brocs de vin le soir dans les bosquets - —Mais le vert paradis des amours enfantines, - - L’innocent paradis, plein de plaisirs furtifs, - Est-il déjà plus loin que l’Inde ou que la Chine? - Peut-on le rappeler avec des cris plaintifs, - Et l’animer encore d’une voix argentine, - L’innocent paradis plein de plaisirs furtifs? - -“Waltzes are milestones of sentimentality,” said Guy shrilly to Teresa, -as they made their way onto the loggia to sit out the remainder of the -dance, “milestones of sentimentality, because a lady can be dated by the -fact of whether it’s the _Blue Danube_, or the _Sourire d’Avril_, or the -_Merry Widow_, that glazes her eye and parts her lips—taking her back -to that charming period when the heels of Mallarmé’s _débutantes_ go -tap, tap, tap, when in a deliciously artificial atmosphere sex expands -and, like some cunning hunted insect, makes itself look like a flower; -I haven’t yet read _A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleur_, but I’m sure -it’s an exquisite description of that period—débutantes, and waltzes, and -camouflaged sex. Its very title is like the name of a French waltz—or -scent.” - -Teresa smiled vaguely.... Why had she scorned that period, barricading -herself against it with books, and Bach and ... myths? When she was old -and heard the strains of ... yes, the _Chocolate Soldier_ ought to be her -milestone ... well, when she hears the _Chocolate Soldier_, if her eyes -glaze and her lips part it will be out of mere bravado. - -But something was happening ... what was it Guy was saying? - -“I never think of anything else but you ... you’re the only person whose -mind I admire ... even if you don’t realise it you _must_ see that you -ought to.” - -“Oh, Guy, what do you want? What is it all about?” she gasped helplessly. - -“Well then, could you? You see, it seems to me so obvious and....” - -“Marry you?” - -“Yes.” - -She saw herself established in St. James’s Street polishing his brasses, -rub, rub, rub; polishing his verses perhaps too ... oh no, he didn’t like -verses to be polished—roughening them, then, with emery-paper ... oh no, -that polished too ... what was it, then, that roughened? - -She began to giggle ... oh Lord, _that_ had done it! Now he was -furious—and with reason. - -“... Your arrogance ... simply unbearable.... I don’t know _what_ you -think ... oh it’s damnable!” and he began to sob. - -She took his hand and stroked it, murmuring: “Hush! old Guy ... I wasn’t -laughing at you, it was just one of those sudden silly thoughts that have -nothing to do with anything. Nothing seems real to-night. I’m really very -very grateful.” - -“Will you then?” and his face brightened. - -“No, no, Guy—I _can’t_. It would be so ... so ... meaningless.” - -Then fresh sobs, and like a passionate, proud child he tore away his -hands, and plunged into the dark garden. What could she do? She could -only leave him to get over it. - -Life was never still; though, like the earth, one did not feel it move -... one’s human relations were ever shifting, silently, like those of the -constellations. Suddenly one night one looks up at the sky and realises -that Orion has reappeared and that the Great Bear is now standing on the -tip of his tail, and one gasps at the vast spaces that have been silently -traversed; and it was with the same sensation of awe that she looked back -on the past year and realised the silent changes in the inter-relations -of her little group: her parents’ relations, her own and Concha’s, her -own and Guy’s. - -A low voice came from the morning-room; it was the Doña’s: “Whatever -Pepa’s opinions or wishes may have been during the latter part of her -life, they are the same as mine now.” - -“Upon my soul! You evidently ... er ... er have sources of ... er ... -INFORMATION closed to the rest of us—I really cannot ... er ... COPE with -such statements” and Harry came out on to the loggia, evidently irritated -beyond endurance. He was followed by the Doña; but when she saw Teresa -and realised that the opportunity for a _tête-à-tête_ was over, having -told her to get a wrap, she went in again. - -Harry walked up and down for a few seconds, in silence, and then -ejaculated ironically: “Remarkable woman, your mother!” “Very!” said -Teresa coldly; she did not choose to discuss her with Harry. - -“Of course, in the light of ... er ... modern psychology it’s as clear -as a pike-staff,” he went on, as usual not reacting to the emotional -atmosphere, “she ... er ... doesn’t ... er ... KNOW it, of course, but -she’s putting up this Catholicism as a barrier to your marriages—every -mother is jealous of her daughters.” - -Oh, these scientific people! Always right, and, yet, at the same time, -always absurdly wrong! For the real sages, the people who _live_ life, -these ugly little treasures found by the excavators miles and miles and -miles down into the human soul, are of absolutely no value ... horrid -little flints that have long since evolved into beautiful bronze -axes ... it was only scientists that cared about that sort of thing. -For all practical purposes it was an absolute libel on the Doña—but, -_dramatically_, it might be of value; for dramatic values have nothing to -do with truth. - -“Our dance, I think, Miss Lane. I couldn’t find you anywhere”; it was -Rory’s voice. - -He led her into the drawing-room, and they began to move up and down, -round and round, among the other solemn and concentrated couples, all -engaged in too serious an exercise to indulge in any conversation beyond -an occasional: “Sorry!” “Oh, _sorry_!” - -When they passed Concha, she and Rory smiled at each other, and he said: -“Telegrams: _Oysters_.” - -That meant: “We are both rather hungry, but never mind, it won’t be long -now till supper—Hurray!” - -How humiliating it was to be so familiar with their jargon! - -She looked at him; his eyes were stern, and fixed on some invisible -point beyond her shoulder, his lips were slightly parted. She was no -more to him than the compass with which Newton in Blake’s picture draws -geometrical figures on the sand. - -Then the music stopped. - -“Shall we sit here?” - -He had become human again. - -“It _has_ been a lovely dance—I do think it’s so awfully good of you all -to have me down for Christmas.” - -How many times exactly had she heard that during the last week? Once -before to herself, twice to the Doña, once to her father, once to -Jollypot. - -“Oh, we liked having you. We generally have lots of people for Christmas.” - -“Well, one couldn’t have a more Christmassy house. It always seems to me -like the house one suddenly comes upon in a wood in a fairy story. One -expects the door to be opened by a badger in livery.” - -Again that bastard Fancy! The same sort of thing had occurred to her -herself—_when_ she was a child; but the imagination of a man ought to be -different from the fancy of a child. - -“It’s the sort of house one can imagine a Barrie play happening in, don’t -you think? Did you see _Dear Brutus_?” - -“Yes; I did.” - -“I didn’t like the girl much—what was her name? Margaret, wasn’t it? I’m -sure her papa starved her—I longed to take her and give her a good square -meal.” Pause. - -She wondered what it would feel like to be the sort of young woman who -could interest and allure him. And what were the qualities needed? It -could not be brains, for she had plenty of brains; nor looks, for she was -good-looking. But nothing about her stirred him; she knew it. - -“Of course, it’s an extraordinary hard life, an actress’s,” he went on, -“it’s a wonder that they keep their looks as they do. It’s a shame! Women -seem handicapped all along the line,” and he looked at her expectantly, -as if sure of her approval at last, “It can’t be much fun being a woman, -unless one were a very beautiful one ... or a very clever one, of -course,” he added hastily. - -Well, the cat was out of the bag: she was plain as well as undesirable. - -Suddenly, Dionysus and his rout vanished from Thebes; temples and -market-place sprang up again, and she remembered joyfully that a fresh -packet of books ought to arrive to-morrow from the London Library. - - -4 - -Most of the guests not staying in the house had left by midnight; but -after that, when the party had dwindled down to four or five couples, the -pianist and fiddler, mellowed by champagne and oysters, were persuaded to -give first one “extra,” then another, then another. - -The pianist, a very anæmic-looking young woman, with a touching absence -of class-jealousy, was loath to disappoint them, and, as far as she was -concerned, they might have gone on having extras till broad daylight; but -the fiddler “turned stunt.” - -“I’m a family man” he protested good-humouredly, but firmly (“You’ll -have to wait till to-morrow night for _that_, old bean!” Rory whispered -to Arnold, “your wife wouldn’t like it at two o’clock in the morning”), -“But I don’t mind ending up with _John Peel_, as it’s Christmas time,” -whereupon, with a wink to the pianist, he struck up with that most -poetical of tunes, and, the men of the party bellowing the words, they -all broke into a boisterous gallop. - -Rory went up to the Doña: “You _must_ dance this with me, please!” - -She yielded with a smile; but her eye caught Arnold’s, and they both -remembered that it had been Pepa who used always to play _John Peel_ at -the end of their dances. - -The tune ended with what means to be a flourish, but really is a wail, -and they stood still, laughing and breathless—a little haggard, a little -dishevelled. - -“Where’s Guy?” said some one. - -“He went up to bed; he had a headache,” said Arnold, glaring fiercely at -Teresa. - -Out in the view, from behind the two-ply curtains of silk and of night, -a cock crew, and then another; and what they said was just _John Peel_ -over again—that ghosts wander in dewy English glades, and that the Past -is dead, dead, dead. - - -5 - -Concha came into Teresa’s room to have her gown unfastened: “You looked -heavenly,” she said, “I love you in mauve.” - -Teresa tugged at the hooks in silence; and then said: “Is it impossible -to teach Parker to unsqueeze hooks when they come back from Pullar’s?” - -“Quite. I nearly died with the effort of getting them to fasten.” - -Then outside there was a familiar muffled step, and a knock. In the -mirror Teresa saw a look of annoyance pass over Concha’s face. - -In came the Doña, in a white dressing-gown, her face illuminated by the -flame of her candle, and looking not unlike one of Zurburán’s Carthusian -monks. - -“Well?” she said. - -“Well darling,” answered Concha, with exaggerated nonchalance, adding to -Teresa, “_won’t_ they undo?” - -The Doña put down her candle, and seated herself heavily on the bed. - -“Oh, damn them! Won’t they undo? Haven’t you any scissors?” - -“That young Dundas seemed to enjoy himself,” said the Doña. - -No answer. - -Then the hooks yielded at last to the leverage of the nail-scissors, and -Concha kissed the Doña and Teresa and went back to her own room. - -The Doña sat on. - -“Do you think he is attracted by Concha?” - -“Who?” - -“That young Dundas.” - -“I really don’t know ... do you want him to be?” - -“Do I want him to be? What has that to do with it? I want to know if he -_is_.” - -“Do you mean does he want to marry her?” - -“Marry her! Englishmen never think of marriage ... they just what you -call ‘rag round’; they can’t even fall in love.” - -Teresa scrutinised her for a few seconds, and then she said: “I believe -you are furious with every man who doesn’t fall in love with one of your -daughters;” and she suddenly remembered a remark of Concha’s made in a -moment of intense irritation: “The Doña ought to keep a brothel—then she -would be really happy.” - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -1 - -That year winter was so mild as to be almost indistinguishable from -spring. Imperceptibly, the sparse patches of snow, the hyacinthine -patches of blue light lying in hollows of the hills, in wrinkles of the -land, turned into small waxen leafless flowers, watching, waiting, in the -grass. - -By the beginning of February the song of the birds had begun; a symbol -that to most hearts is almost Chinese, the symbol and its idea being so -indistinguishable that it seems that it is Hope herself who is perched -out there on the top of the trees, singing. - -One day one would suddenly realise that the mirabelle and purple prunus -were actually out; but blossom is such a chilly thing, and it arrives so -quietly, that it seemed to make no difference in that leafless world. - -Then would come a day when the air was exquisitely soft and the sky very -blue; and between the sky and earth there would seem to be a silent -breathless conspiracy. Not a bud, only silence; but one knew that -something would soon happen. But the next morning, there would be an east -wind—skinning the bloom off the view, turning the sky to lead, and making -the mirabelle and prunus look, in their leaflessness, so bleak that they -might have been the flower (in its sense of _essence, embodiment of_), -of the stern iron qualities of January. The singing of the birds, too, -became a cold, cold sound, as if the east wind was, like the ether, a -medium through which we hear as well as see. But such days were rare. - -Dick loved early spring. When the children were little they used to -have “treasure-hunts” at their Christmas parties. They would patter -through drawing-room, dining-room, hall, billiard-room, finding, say, an -india-rubber duck in the crown of a hat, or a bag of sweets in a pocket -of the billiard-table; and Dick’s walks through the grounds in these -early spring days were like these “treasure-hunts”; for he would suddenly -come upon a patch of violets under a wall, or track down a sudden waft -of perfume to a leafless bush starred with the small white blossoms of -winter-sweet, or—greatest prize of all—stand with throbbing heart by -the hedges of yew, gazing into a nest with four white eggs, while he -whispered: “Look Anna!” - -For this was the first year that he had gone on these hunts alone. - -To tell the truth, he was very tired of his _liaison_. The lady was -expensive, and her conversation was insipid. Also ... _perhaps_ ... his -blood was not _quite_ as hot as it had once been. - -“Buck up, old bean! What’s the _matter_ with you?” ... _The fires within -are waning_ ... where had he heard that expression? Oh yes, it was what -Jollypot had said about that old Hun conductor, Richter, when, years -ago, they had taken her to Covent Garden to hear _Tristan_—how they had -laughed! It was such a ridiculous expression to use about such a stolid -old Hun and, besides, it happened to be quite untrue, Pepa and Teresa had -said. - -“What’s the matter with you to-night, you juggins?” _The fires within -are waning_ ... it was all very well to laugh, but really it was rather -a beautiful expression.... Good Lord! It wasn’t so many years before he -would be reaching his grand climacteric.... Peter Trevers died then, so -did Jim Lane. - - * * * * * - -One morning he noticed the Doña standing stock-still in the middle of -the lawn, staring at something through her _lorgnette_. She was smiling. -“What a beautiful mouth she has!” he thought, as he drew nearer. - -Softly he came up and stood beside her, and discovered that what she was -watching was a thrush that was engaged, by means of a series of sharp -rhythmic pecks, in hauling out of the ground the fat white coils of an -enormous worm. - -It reminded him of a Russian song that his lady had on her gramophone, -the _Volga Boat Song_—the haulers on the Volga sang it as they hauled in -the ropes.... _I-i-sh-tscho-rass_ he began to hum; she looked up quickly: -“You remember that?” - -“What?” he asked nervously. In answer, she sang to the same tune: -_Ma-ri-nee-ro_, and then said: “The sailors used to sing it at Cadiz, -that autumn we spent there ... when the children were little.” - -“By Jove, yes, so they did!” he answered with a self-deprecatory laugh. - -The thrush had now succeeded in hauling up almost the whole length of the -worm; and it lay on the ground really very like the coils of a miniature -rope. Then suddenly he lost the rhythm, changed his method to a series of -little jerky, impatient, ineffectual desultory taps, pausing between each -to look round with a bright _distrait_ eye; and, finally, when a few more -taps would have finished the job, off he hopped, as if he could bear it -no longer. - -“Silly fellow!” said the Doña. - -Dick was racking his brain in the hopes of finding some link between -thrushes and Pepa.... “Pepa was very fond of thrushes” ... but was -she?... “Pepa with the garden hose was rather like that thrush with the -worm” ... and wasn’t there an infant malady called “thrush” ... had Pepa -ever had it? no, no, it wouldn’t do; later on an apter occasion would -arise for some tender little reconciliatory reminiscence. - -“You know, I had little Anna and Jasper baptised into the Catholic Church -at Christmas,” said the Doña suddenly, and, as it seemed to Dick, quite -irrelevantly; but her voice was unmistakably friendly. - -“By Jove ... did you really?” - -“I did. I arranged it with Father Dawson. The children enjoyed keeping it -a secret from Harry.” - -Dick chuckled; the Doña smiled. - -“Next year little Anna will make her first Communion.” - -“Does she want to?” Dick had never noticed in his grand-daughter the -slightest leanings to religion. - -“I don’t know. There are compensations,” and again the Doña smiled. - -“What? a new Girl-Guide kit?” - -“No; the complete works of Scott.” - -“My dear Anna—you ought to have been the General of the Jesuits!” - -The Doña looked flattered. - -“Well, Dick,” she went on in a brisk, but still friendly voice, “we -really must decide soon—_are_ we going to have pillar-roses or clematis -at the back of the borders? Rudge says....” - -They spent a happy, amicable morning together; and at luncheon their -daughters were conscious that the tension between them had considerably -relaxed. - - -2 - -One sunny evening, walking in his pleasance, and weaving out of memories -chaplets for a dear head, as, in the dead years, he had woven them out of -those roses, white and damask, the Knight of La Tour-Landry resolved to -compile, from the “matter of England, France and Rome,” a book for the -guidance of his motherless daughters. - -In that book Teresa read the following _exemplum_:— - - “It is contained in the story of Constantinople, there was - an Emperor had two daughters, and the youngest had good - conditions, for she loved well God, and prayed him, at all - times that she awaked, for the dead. And as she and her sister - lay a-bed, her sister awoke and heard her at her prayers, and - scorned and mocked her, and said, ‘hold your peace, for I may - not sleep for you.’ And so it happened that youth constrained - them both to love two brethren, that were knights, and were - goodly men. And so the sisters told their council each to - other. And at the last they gave the Knights tryst that they - should come to lie by them by night privily at certain hour. - And that one came to the youngest sister, but him thought he - saw a thousand dead bodies about her in sheets; and he was so - sore afraid and afeard, that he ran away as he had been out of - himself, and caught the fevers and great sickness through the - fear that he had, and laid him in his bed, and might not stir - for sickness. But that other Knight came into that other sister - without letting, and begat her with child. And when her father - wist she was with child, he made cast her into the river, and - drench her and her child, and he made to scorch the Knight - quick. Thus, for that delight, they were both dead; but that - other sister was saved. And I shall tell you on the morrow it - was in all the house, how that one Knight was sick in his bed; - and the youngest sister went to see him and asked him whereof - he was sick. ‘As I went to have entered between the curtains of - your bed, I saw so great number of dead men, that I was nigh - mad for fear, and yet I am afeard and afraid of the sight.’ - And when she heard that, she thanked God humbly that had kept - her from shame and destruction.... And therefore, daughters, - bethink you on this example when ye wake, and sleep not till ye - have prayed for the dead, as did the youngest daughter.” - - -3 - -Towards the end of February Teresa heard excited voices coming from the -Doña’s morning-room. She went in and found the Doña sitting on the sofa -with a white face and blazing eyes, her father nervously shifting the -ornaments on the chimneypiece, and Concha standing in the middle of the -room and looking as obstinate as Caroline the donkey. - -“Teresa!” the Doña said in a very quiet voice, “Concha tells us she is -engaged to Captain Dundas.” - -But of course!... had not Parker said that there was “the marriage -likeness” between them—“both with such lovely blue eyes?” - -“And he has written to your father—we have just received this letter,” -and the Doña handed it to her: “From the letter and from her we learn -that Captain Dundas has perverted her. She is going to become a -Protestant.” - -There was a pause; Concha’s face did not move a muscle. - -“The reason why she is going to do this is that Captain Dundas would be -disinherited by his uncle if he married a Catholic. What do you think of -this conduct, Teresa?” - -Concha looked at her defiantly. - -“I don’t ... I ... if Concha doesn’t believe in it all, I don’t see why -she should sacrifice her happiness to something she doesn’t believe in,” -she found herself saying. - -Concha’s face relaxed for a second, and she flashed her a look of -gratitude. - -“Teresa!” cried the Doña, and her voice was inexpressibly reproachful. - -Dick turned round from the chimneypiece: “Teresa’s quite right,” he said; -“upon my soul, it would be madness, as she says, to sacrifice one’s -happiness for ... for that sort of thing.” - -“Dick!” - -And he turned from the cold severity of the Doña’s voice and eye to a -re-examination of the ornaments. - -As to Teresa, though his words had been but an echo and corroboration of -her own, she was unreasonable enough to be shocked by them; coming, as -they did, from a descendant of the men who had witnessed the magnificent -gesture with which Ridley and Latimer had lit a candle in England. - -“Well, Teresa, as you think the same as Concha ... I don’t know what I -have done.... I seem to have failed very much as a mother. It must be my -own fault,” and she laughed bitterly. - -Concha’s face softened: “Doña!” she said appealingly. - -“Concha! Are you really going to do this terrible thing?” - -“I must ... it’s what Teresa said ... I mean ... it would be so mad not -to!” - -“I see—it would be mad not to sell Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. -Well, in that case, there is nothing more to be said ... and you have -your father and sister as supporters,” and again she laughed bitterly. - -Concha’s face again hardened; and, with a shrug, she left the room. - -There was silence for a few seconds, and Teresa glanced mechanically at -the letter she held in her hand: “... won’t think it frightful cheek -... go rather gently while I’m at the Staff College ... my uncle ... -Drumsheugh ... allowance ... will try so hard to make Concha happy ... my -uncle ... Drumsheugh ... hope Mrs. Lane won’t mind frightfully ... the -Scottish Episcopal Church ... very high, it doesn’t acknowledge the Pope, -that’s the only difference.” - -Suddenly the Doña began to sob convulsively: “She ... is ... my child, my -baby! Oh, none of you understand ... none of you _understand_! It’s my -fault ... I have sinned ... I ought never to have married a Protestant. -My Pepa ... my poor Pepa ... she knows _now_ ... she would stop it if she -could. Oh, _what_ have I done?” - -Teresa kneeled down beside her, and took one of her cold hands in hers; -she herself was cold and trembling—she had only once before, at Pepa’s -death, seen her mother break down. - -Dick came to her other side, and gently stroked her hair: “My dear, -you’ve nothing to blame yourself for,” he said, “and there are really -lots of good Protestants, you know. And I’ve met some very broad-minded -Roman Catholics, too, who took a ... a ... sensible view of it all. These -Spanish priests are apt....” - -“Spanish priests!” she cried, sitting up in her chair and turning blazing -eyes upon him, “what do _you_ know of Spanish priests? You, an elderly -Don Juan Tenorio!” - -Dick flushed: “Well, I _have_ heard you know ... those priests of yours -aren’t all so mighty immaculate,” he said sullenly. - -“Dick! How—_dare_—you?” and having first frozen him with her stare, she -got up and left the room. - -Dick turned to Teresa: “For heaven’s sake,” he said, “do make your -mother see that Protestants are Christians too, that they aren’t all -blackguards.” - -“It would be no good—that’s really got nothing to do with it,” said -Teresa wearily. - -“Nothing to do with it? Oh, well—you’re all too deep for _me_. Anyhow, -it’s all a most awful storm in a teacup, and the thing that really makes -her so angry is that she knows perfectly well she can do nothing to -prevent it. Well, do go up to her now.... _I_ daren’t show my face within -a mile ... get her some _eau-de-Cologne_ or something. ’Snice! ’Snice, -old man! Come along then, and look at the crocuses,” and, followed by -’Snice, he went through the French window into the garden. - -Yes; her father had been partly right—a very bitter element in it all -was that the passionate dominant Doña could do nothing to prevent the -creatures of her body from managing their lives in their own way. What -help was it that behind her stood the convictions of the multitudinous -dead, the “bishops, priests, deacons, sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, -lectors, porters, confessors, virgins, widows, and all the holy people of -God?” She and they were powerless to arrest the incoming tide of life; -she had identified herself with the dead—with what was old, crazy, and -impotent, and, therefore, she was pre-doomed to failure. - -Teresa had a sudden vision of the sinful couch (according to the Doña’s -views) of Concha and Rory, infested by the dead: “I say, Concha, what a -frightful bore! They ought to have given us a mosquito-net.” “Oh Lord! -Well, never mind—I’m simply _dropping_ with sleep.” And so to bed, -comfortably mattressed by the shrouds of the “holy people of God.” - -She went up and tried the Doña’s door, but found it locked. She felt that -she ought next to go to Concha, upon whom, she told herself, all this was -very hard—that she, who had merely set out upon the flowery path that -had been made by the feet of myriads and myriads of other sane and happy -people since the world began, should have her joy dimmed, her laughter -arrested, by ghosts and other peoples’ delusions. But, though she told -herself this, she could not feel any real pity; her heart was as cold as -ice. - -However, she went to Concha’s room, and found her sitting at her desk -writing a letter—probably a long angry one to that other suffering sage, -Elfrida Penn. - -“Poor old Concha!” she said, “I’m sorry it should be like this for you.” - -Concha—puffed up with the sense of being a symbol of a whole -generation—scowled angrily: “Oh, it’s all too fantastic! Thank the Lord -I’ll soon be out of all this!” - -At times there was something both dour and ungracious about Concha—a -complete identification of herself with the unbecoming rôles she chose to -act. - -Teresa found herself wondering if, after all, she herself had not more -justification with regard to her than recently she had come to fear. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -1 - -By the middle of March, Concha’s engagement had become an accepted fact: -Dick and Rory’s uncle, Colonel Dundas of Drumsheugh, had exchanged -letters; the marriage was fixed for the beginning of July; wedding -presents had already begun to drift in. - -Even the Doña began to be hypnotised by the inevitable, and to find a -little balm in the joys of the trousseau. - -In Parker’s sewing-room little scenes like this would take place: “No, -Concha, I _won’t_ allow you to have them so low. You might as well be -stark naked.” - -Then Parker would giggle, and Concha, after a good-natured “Good Lord!” -would say, “I tell you, Doña, they’re always _worn_ like that now.” - -“That makes _no_ difference to me.” - -“Oh, _darling_! I believe you’d like me to borrow one of Jollypot’s as a -pattern—they’re flannel and up to her ears, and the sleeves reach down to -her nails.” - -“Oh, Miss Concha!” Parker would titter, both shocked and amused; and -the Doña, with a snort, would exclaim, “That poor Jollypot! To think -of her sleeping in flannel! But there are many degrees between the -nightgowns of Jollypot and those of a _demi-mondaine_, and you remember -what Father Vaughan ...” and then she would suddenly realise that the -views on _lingerie_ of the Roman hierarchy no longer carried any weight -with Concha, and in a chilly voice she would say, “Well, you and Parker -had better settle it in your own way; it has nothing to do with me ... -_now_,” and would sweep out of the room with a heavy heart. - -One evening Dick, who had been in London for the day, said at dinner, -“By the way I met Munroe in the city. He caught flu in that beastly -cold seminary, and it turned into pneumonia. He looked very bad, poor -chap. He’s on sick leave at present, and I was wondering ...” and he -looked timidly at the Doña: (Since his escapade he had become a very -poor-spirited creature.) “I was wondering, Anna ... if you don’t mind, of -course, if we might ask him down for a few days.” - -“Poor young man! Certainly,” said the Doña, with unusual warmth; for, as -a rule, she deplored her husband’s unbridled hospitality. - -“I wonder ... a very odd thing ... he was getting on extraordinarily -well in business and everything.... He was asking about you, Concha, and -your engagement. Yon saw a good deal of him, didn’t you? Have you been -breaking his heart and turning him monk?” - -Concha laughed; gratified, evidently, by the suggestion. But the Doña -said coldly, “Concha was probably merely one of the many tests to which -he was putting his vocation—and, evidently, not a very sweet one.... What -are you all laughing at? Oh, I see! I’ve used the wrong word—_Acid_ test, -if you like it better.” - -But, though she laughed, Concha’s sensitive vanity flooded her cheeks. - -That same night Dick wrote off to David Munroe telling him to come down -at once and spend his convalescence at Plasencia. - - -2 - -David Munroe arrived two days later. The Doña welcomed him very warmly, -and then, having got him some illustrated papers, left him alone in the -drawing-room, and hurried back to the sewing-room, where she was busy -with Parker over the trousseau. - -Teresa, coming in to look for a book about a quarter of an hour later, -was surprised to find him already arrived, as she had not heard the car. -In a flash she took in the badly cut semi-clerical black suit hanging on -his strong well-knit body, and noticed how hollow-eyed and pale he had -become. - -She greeted him kindly, coolly; slightly embarrassed by the intentness of -his gaze. - -“We are so glad you were able to come. It’s so horrible to be ill in -an institution. But you ought to get well soon now, the weather’s so -heavenly, and you’ll soon be able to lie out in the garden,” she said, -and began to look for her book. - -He watched her in silence for a few seconds, and then said, “Miss Lane, -when I was here last, I gave you to understand that I was the heir to -Munroe of Auchenballoch.... I’ll admit it was said as a sort of a joke -when I was angry, but it was a lie for all that. I come of quite plain -people.” - -Clearly, he was “making his soul” against ordination. She tried to feel -irritated, and say in a cold and slightly surprised voice, “Really? I’m -afraid I don’t remember ... er ...” but what she actually said was: “It -doesn’t matter a bit; it was obviously, as you say, just a joke ... at -least ... er ... well, at any rate, I haven’t the slightest idea what -_our_ great-grandfather was—quite likely a fishmonger; at any rate, I’m -sure he was far from aristocratic.” - -David gave a sort of grunt and began restlessly to pace up and down; this -fidgeted Teresa: “Do sit down, Mr. Munroe,” she said, “you must be so -tired. I can’t think where my sister is—she’ll come down soon, I expect,” -and added to herself, “I really don’t see why I should have to entertain -Concha’s discarded suitors.” - -He sank slowly into an arm-chair. “Miss Lane,” he said, “is it true that -your sister is leaving the Catholic fold?” - -“I believe so,” she answered; and there was a note of dryness in her -voice. - -There was a pause; David leaning forward and staring at the Persian rug -at his feet with knitted brows, as if it were a document in a strange and -difficult script. - -Suddenly he looked up and said; “Why is she doing that?” - -“That you must ask _her_,” she answered coldly. - -“I heard ... that ... that it was because Captain Dundas’s uncle wouldn’t -leave him Drumsheugh, if he married a Catholic, but ... that wouldn’t be -true, would it?” - -“What? That Colonel Dundas has a prejudice against Catholics?” - -“No, that that’s the reason she’s leaving the Church?” - -She gave a little shrug: “Well, I suppose Paris makes up for a mass.” - -For a few seconds he looked puzzled, and then said, “Oh yes, that was -Henry IV. of France—only the other way round.... That was a curious -case of Grace working through queer channels—a man finding the Church -and salvation through worldliness and treachery to his friends. But I -shouldn’t wonder if what I was saying wasn’t heresy—I’m not very learned -in the Fathers yet.” - -He paused; and then, fixing her with his eyes, said—“Did it shock _you_ -very much—her being perverted for such a reason?” - -“Really, Mr. Munroe,” she said coldly, “my feelings about the matter are -nobody’s concern, I....” - -“I beg your pardon,” he said gruffly, and blushed to the roots of his -hair. - -“Oh these touchy Scots!” she thought impatiently. - -There was an awkward silence for some seconds, and she decided the only -way to “save his face” was to ask _him_ a personal question, and give him -the chance of snubbing her in his turn; so she said, “We had no idea when -you stayed with us last autumn that you were thinking of being ordained -... but perhaps you weren’t thinking of it then?” - -He did not answer at once, but seemed to be meditating: “It’s never quite -a matter of _thinking_,” he said finally, “it’s just a drifting ... -drawn on and on by the perfumes of the Church. What is it the Vulgate -says again? _In odore unguentorum tuorum curremus_ ...” he broke off, -and then after a few seconds, as if summing up, slightly humorously, the -situation, he added ruminatively, the monosyllable “úhu!” And the queer -Scots ejaculation seemed to give a friendly, homely turn to his statement. - -“You were lucky being born in the Church,” he went on; “my father was an -Established Church minister up in Inverness-shire, and I was taught to -look upon the Church as the Scarlet Woman. I remember once at the Laird’s -I ... well, I came near to bringing up my tea because Lady Stewart -happened to say that her cook was a Catholic. And sometimes still,” -and he lowered his voice and looked at her with half frightened eyes, -“sometimes still I feel a wee bit sick at mass.” - -It was indeed strange that he too should feel the _ambivalence_ of the -Holy Mother. - -“I know what you mean,” she said; “I never exactly feel sick—but I know -what you mean.” - -“Do you?” he cried eagerly, “and you brought up in it too!” - -He got up, took a few restless paces up and down the room, and then stood -still before a sketch in water-colours of Seville Cathedral, staring at -it with unseeing eyes. Suddenly, he seemed to relax, and he returned to -his chair. - -“Well,” he said, “when one comes to think of it, you know, it would be -hard to find a greater sin than ... feeling like that at mass.” Then a -slow smile crept over his face: “I remember my father telling me that his -father met a wee lad somewhere in the Highlands, and asked him what he’d -had to his breakfast, and he said, “brose,”—and then what he’d had to his -dinner, and he said “brose,” and then what he’d had to his tea, and it -was brose again; so my grandfather said, “D’you not get tired of nothing -but brose?” and the wee lad turned on him, quite indignant, and said, -“Wud ye hae me weary o’ ma meat?” ... It’s not just exactly the same, -I’ll admit—but it was a fine spirit the wee lad showed.” - -A little wind blew in through one of the open windows, very balmy, fresh -from its initiation into the secret of its clan,—a secret not unlike -that of the Venetian glass-blowers, and whispered from wind to wind down -the ages—the secret of blowing the earth into the colours and shapes of -violets and daffodils. It made the summer cretonne curtains creak and -the Hispano-Mauresque plates knock against the wall on which they were -fastened and give out tiny ghostly chimes; as did also the pendent balls -on the Venetian glass. Teresa suddenly thought of the late Pope listening -to the chimes of St. Mark’s on a gramophone. All at once she became very -conscious of the furniture—it was a whiff of that strange experience she -had had in her Chelsea lodgings. Far away in the view a cock crowed. She -suddenly wondered if the piano-tuner were coming that morning. - -“The Presbyterians, you know,” he was saying, “they’re not like the -Episcopalians; they feel things more ... well, more concretely ... for -instance, they picture themselves taking their Sabbath walk some day -down the golden streets ... they seem to ... well, it’s different.” He -paused, and then went on, “My people were very poor, you know; it was -just a wee parish and a very poor one, and it was just as much as my -mother could do to make both ends meet. But one day she came into my -father’s study—I remember, he was giving me my Latin lesson—and in her -hand she held one of these savings boxes for deep-sea fishermen, and she -said, “Donald”—that was my father’s name—“Donald, every cleric should go -to the Holy Land; there’s a hundred pound in here I’ve saved out of the -house-keeping money, so away with you as soon as you can get off.” How -she’d managed it goodness only knows, and she’d never let _us_ feel the -pinch anywhere. You’d not find an Episcopal minister’s wife doing that!” -and he looked at her defiantly. - -“No; perhaps not ... that was very fine. Did your father like the Holy -Land when he got there?” - -There was something at once pathetic and grotesque in the sudden vision -she had of the Presbyterian pilgrim, with a baggy umbrella for staff, and -a voluminous and shabby portmanteau for script, meticulously placing his -elastic-sided boots in his Master’s footprints. - -“Oh yes, he liked it—he said it was a fine mountainous country with a -rare light atmosphere—though Jerusalem was not as ‘golden’ as he had been -led to understand! and he met some Russian pilgrims there, and he would -often talk of their wonderful child-like faith ... but I think he thought -it a pity, all the same, that Our Lord wasn’t born in Scotland,” and he -smiled. - -Her fancy played for a few seconds round the life, the mind, of that dead -minister: - -“... But to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared within the pages of -the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the sacred name of JEHOVAH -in Hebrew capitals: pressed down by the weight of the style, worn to -the last fading thinness of the understanding, there were glimpses, -glimmering notions of the patriarchal wanderings, with palm trees -hovering in the horizon, and processions of camels at the distance -of three thousand years; there was Moses with the Burning Bush, the -number of the Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the law and the -prophets ... the great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the -globe were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it turned over; and -though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic veil of inscrutable -mysteries drawn over it, yet it was a slumber ill exchanged for all the -sharpened realities of sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father’s life was -comparatively a dream; but it was a dream of infinity and eternity, of -death, the resurrection, and a judgment to come!” - -It was not that this passage word for word stalked through her head; it -was just a sudden whiff of memory of this passage. And on its wings it -wafted the perfume of all the melancholy eloquence of Hazlitt—the smell, -the vision, of noble autumn woods between Salisbury and Andover. If ever -a man had not walked dry-shod that man was Hazlitt; all his life he had -waded up to the waist in Time and Change and Birth and Death, and they -had been to him what he held green, blue, red, and yellow to have been -to Titian: “the pabulum to his sense, the precious darlings of his eye,” -which “sunk into his mind, and nourished and enriched it with the sense -of beauty,” so that his pages glow with green, blue, red, and yellow. - -Time, Change, Birth, Death—she, too, was floating on their multi-coloured -waters. - -“Do you think your father is in hell?” she asked suddenly. - -He winced. - -“I don’t think so,” he answered, after a pause: “It isn’t as if he’d seen -the light and turned away from it. I think he’ll be in Purgatory,” and he -looked at her questioningly. - -She was touched—this young seminarist was still quite free from the -dogmatism and harshness of the priest. - -“You know the legend, don’t you,” she said gently, “that the prayers of -St. Gregory the Great got the soul of the Emperor Trajan into Paradise?” - -“Is that so?” he cried eagerly. - -“Yes; he was the just pagan _par excellence_, and the prayers of St. -Gregory saved his soul.” - -The door opened and Parker came in: “Excuse me, miss, but have you seen -Miss Concha? It’s about that old lace ... Madame wishes to see if it can -be draped without being cut.” - -“No, Parker, I have not seen her.” - -And Parker withdrew. - -“I thought about that ... I mean my parents’ souls,” he went on, “when -I first felt a vocation. I thought, maybe, me being a priest might help -them—not that they weren’t a hundred times better than me—it’s all very -mysterious ...” he paused, and once again punctuated his sentence with -the ruminative “úhu.” - -“My mother is terribly unhappy because my eldest sister died an atheist -... and now Concha’s having ratted ...” she found herself saying; -herself surprised at this abandoning of her wonted reserve. - -“Poor lady!” he said very sympathetically; “yes, it’s a bad business for -a mother ... my aunt Jeannie, she was an elderly lady, a good bit older -than my mother. I lived with her in Inverness when I was going to the -Academy. Well, my mother told me she had several good offers when she -was young, but she would never marry, because she felt she just couldn’t -face the responsibility of maybe bringing a damned soul into the world -... yes, the Scotch think an awful lot about the ‘last things.’ ... And I -suppose your mother can’t do anything to stop her?” - -“Have you ever heard of a mother being able to stop a child going its own -way?” - -“Maybe not,” and he smiled: “I should think _you_ must have been most -awfully wilful when you were wee,” and he looked at her quizzically. - -The moment when the conversation between a man and a woman changes from -the general to the personal is always a pungent one; Teresa gave him a -cool smile and said, “How do you know?” - -“Well, weren’t you?” - -“Perhaps ... in a very quiet way.” - -“Oh, that’s always the worst.” - -Then, almost as if it were a tedious duty, he harked back to Concha’s -perversion: “Yes, it’s a bad business for you all about Miss Concha.” - -“Life absorbs everything—in time,” said Teresa, half to herself. - -“What do you mean exactly by that, Miss Lane?” - -“Heresy, probably,” and she smiled. - -“Well, what do you mean?” - -“It’s difficult to explain ... but I feel a sort of transubstantiation -always going on ... sin and mistakes and sorrows and joy slowly, -inevitably, turned into the bread that is life, and it’s no use worrying -and struggling and trying to prevent everything but fine flour from going -in ... all’s grist that comes to the mill.” - -He looked at her intently for a few seconds: “Don’t you believe in the -teaching of the Church, Miss Lane?” - -“Does it ... does it matter about believing?” - -“Yes, it matters.” - -“Well ... I haven’t quite made up my mind.” - -Suddenly from the garden came Concha’s voice singing: - - I’m so _jolly_ glad to meet you! - I’m so _jolly_ glad you’re glad! - -Then one of the French-windows burst open, and in she came, all blown by -March winds, a bunch of early daffodils in her hand, and, behind her, -’Snice, his paws caked with mud. - -She made Teresa think of the exquisite conceit in which Herrick describes -a wind-blown maiden: - - She lookt as she’d been got with child - By young Favonius. - -“Hallo! When did you arrive? It was such a divine morning I had to go -for a walk. You poor creature—you do look thin. Oh dear, I _must_ have a -cigarette.” - -Her unnecessary heartiness probably concealed a little embarrassment; as -to him—he was perfectly calm, grave, and friendly. - -Then Dick came in: “Hallo! How are you, Munroe? So sorry I wasn’t about -when you arrived—had to go down to the village to see the parson. We’ll -have to fatten you up while you’re here—shan’t we, Concha? I don’t know -whether we can rise to _haggis_, but we’ll do our best.” - -Teresa felt a strange sensation of relief; here it was back again—old, -foolish, meaningless, Merry England. She realised that, during the last -half hour, she had been in another world—it was not exactly life; and -she remembered that sense of almost frightening incongruity when she had -first heard of David’s vocation. - - -3 - -Soon it was real spring: the trees became covered with golden buds, with -pale green tassels; the orchard was a mass of white blossom; the view -became streaked with the startling greenness of young wheat; and the long -grass of the wild acre beyond the orchard was penetrated with jonquils, -and daffodils, and narcissi, boldly pouting their corollas at birds and -insects and men. While very soon every one grew so accustomed to the -singing of the birds that one almost ceased to _hear_ it—it had entered -the domain of vision, and become a stippled background to the _velatura_ -of trees and leaves and flowers. - -David had settled down very happily at Plasencia, and had proved himself -to be a highly domesticated creature—always ready to do odd jobs about -the house or garden. - -Shortly after his arrival Concha had gone up to Scotland to stay with -Colonel Dundas, so it fell upon Teresa to entertain him. - -They would go for long walks; and though they talked all the time, never, -after that first conversation, did they touch on religious matters. - -Sometimes he would tell her of his childhood in Scotland, and it soon -became almost a part of her own memories: the small, dark, sturdy -creature in a shabby kilt, a “poke of sweeties” in his sporran, at play -with his brothers and sisters, dropping, say, a worm-baited bootlace -into the liquid amber of the burn—their chaff, as befitted children of -the Manse, with a biblical flavour, “Now then David, my man, no so much -lip—_Selah, change the tune_, d’ye hear?” And the hillsides tesselated -with heather and broom, and the sheep ruddled red as deer, and the beacon -of the rowans flashed from hill to hill; while down the bland and portly -Spey floated little dreams, like toy boats, making for big towns, and the -sea, and over the sea.... Then all would melt into the tune of the “Old -Hundred”: - - Awl peeeople thaat own errrth dew dwell. - -What time James Grant, the precentor with the trombone-voice, rocked -his Bible up and down, as though it were a baby whose slumbers he was -soothing with an ogre lullaby. - -All this was a far cry from his Holiness, the Immaculate Conception, -the Sacred Heart of Jesus ... and yet ... it was not quite Plasencia; -there was something different about it all: again she remembered the -incongruity of the minarets of the Sacré-Cœur. - -Sometimes, too, he would tell her of his years in South Africa—for -instance, how, after a long day of riding up and down the fields of -sugar-cane, he would lie out on the veranda of his little bungalow and -read Dumas’s novels, while the plangent songs of the indentured Indians, -celebrating some feast with a communal curry, would float up from their -barracks under the hill; or else the night would shiver to the uncanny -cry of a bush-baby: “It’s a wee beastie that wails at night. There’s no -other sound like it in the world—beside it the owl’s and the nightjar’s -cries are homely and barn-door like.” - -“It must have been the sort of noise one would hear if one slept in -Cathy’s old room at Wuthering Heights,” she said, half to herself. - -“You’re right there,” he answered, “I never thought of it, but you’re -quite right,” and then he added, “it’s a grand book, that.” And, after -another pause: “Do you realise that one never knows whether Cathy and -Heathcliff were sinners?” - -“How do you mean? I must say they both struck me as very wild and violent -characters!” - -“No, no, I mean _sinners_. One never knows ... whether they broke the -Seventh Commandment or not,” and suddenly he blushed violently. - - * * * * * - -After tea he would take her drives in the car; it was very peaceful -rushing past squat churches with faintly dog-toothed Norman towers, past -ruined windmills, and pollard willows, and the delicate diversity of -spring woods. Guy had once said that a motor drive in the evening through -the Eastern Counties was like Gray’s _Elegy_ cut up by a jig-saw. - -Sometimes, as they sped along, he would sing—songs he had learned at the -front. There was one that the Canadians had taught him, with the chorus: - - Be sure and check your chewing gum - With the darkie at the door, - And you’ll hear some Bible stories - That you never heard before. - -There was the French waltz-song, _Sous les Ponts de Paris_, of which he -only knew a few words here and there, and these he pronounced abominably; -but its romantic wistful tune suited his voice. Sometimes, too, he would -sing Zulu songs that reminded Teresa of Spanish _coplas_ sung by Seville -gipsies; and sometimes the Scottish psalms and paraphrases in metre; -and their crude versification and rugged melodious airs struck her, -accustomed to the intoning of the Latin Psalter, as almost ridiculous. -They had lost all of what Sir Philip Sidney calls, “the psalmist’s -notable prosopopœias when he maketh you, as it were, see God coming in -His majesty”; and they made one see, instead, a very homely God, who, -in the cool of the evening, would stroll into the crofter’s cottage, as -though it had been the tent of Abraham, and praise the guidwife’s scones, -and resolve the crofter’s theological difficulties. - -All this showed a robustness of conscience—he had none of the -doctrinairism and queasiness of the ordinary convert; what mattered it to -him that the songs he sang were often _very_ secular, the version of the -Psalms heavy with Presbyterianism? - -But she was often conscious of the decades that lay between them, the -leagues and leagues, of which the milestones were little cultured jokes -at Chelsea tea-parties, and Cambridge epigrams, and endless novels and -plays. The very language he spoke was twenty or thirty years behind her -own; such expressions as “a very refined lady,” or “a regular earthly -Paradise,” fell from his lips with all their pristine dignity. And yet -she could talk to him simply and spontaneously as to no one else. - -Since he had been there she had left off reading mediæval books, and her -brain felt like a deserted hive. - - -4 - -Easter was very late that year, and the Catholics at Plasencia were -wakened very early on Easter morning to an exquisite, soft, scented day, -almost like summer. - -Teresa, looking out of her window as she dressed, saw that her parents -were already walking in the garden. She gazed for some seconds at her -father’s sturdy back, as he stood, as if rooted to the earth, gazing at -some minute flower in the border. - -St. Joseph of Arimathea, she thought, may have been just such a kindly -self-indulgent person as he; dearly loving his garden. And if her father -had been asked to allow the corpse of a young dissenter to lie in _his_ -garden, though he might have grumbled, he would have been far too -good-natured to refuse. And, if that young dissenter had turned out to -be God Almighty, her father would have turned into a Saint, and after -his death his sturdy bones would have worked miracles. She smiled as she -pictured the Doña’s indignant surprise at finding her husband chosen for -canonisation—the College of Cardinals would have had no difficulty in -obtaining an _advocatus diaboli_. - -And as to the garden—surely the contact of Christ’s body would have -fertilised it, a thousand times more than Lorenzo’s head the pot of -basil, making it riot into a forest of fantastic symbolic blossoms: great -racemes, perhaps, which, with their orange-pollened pistils protruding -like flames from their seven long, white, waxy blossoms, would recall -the seven-branched candlestick in the Temple; bell-flowers shaped -like chalices and stained crimson inside as if with blood; monstrous -veronicas, each blossom bearing the impress of the Holy Face. - -What an unutterably ridiculous faith it was! But, for good or ill, her -own imagination was steeped all through with the unfading dye of its -traditions. - -Then she went downstairs, and David drove them through the fresh morning -to mass. - -The nearest Catholic church was in a small market-town some ten miles -distant. It was always a pleasure to Teresa to drive through that town—it -had the completeness and finish of a small, beautifully made object -that one could turn round and round in one’s hands and examine from -every side. The cobbled market-place, where on Saturdays cheap-jacks -turned somersaults and cracked jokes in praise of their wares, exactly -as they had done in the days of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; the flat -Georgian houses of red brick picked out in white and grown over with -ivy, in one of which the doctor’s daughters knitted jumpers and talked -about the plays they had seen on their last visit to London—“a very -weepie piece; playing on nothing but the black notes, don’t you know!” -the heraldic lion on the sign of the old inn; the huge yellow poster -advertising Colman’s Mustard—it was all absorbed into a small harmonious -whole, an English story. All, that is to say, except the large Catholic -church built in the hideous imitation Gothic of the last century, _that_ -remained ever outside of it all, a great unsightly excrescence, spoiling -the harmony. It had been built with money left for the purpose by a pious -lady, who had begun her career as a Belgian actress, and ended it as -the widow of a rich manufacturer of dolls’ eyes, who had bought a big -property in the neighbourhood. - -“I used to think when I was a child,” said Teresa, who was sitting in -front beside David, “that the relics under the altar were small wax -skulls and glass eyes.” - -He turned and looked at her with an indulgent smile. - -“I believe he looks upon me as a little girl,” she said to herself; and -she felt at once annoyed and strangely glad. - -Then they went into the dank, dark, candle-lit church; and it was indeed -as if they had suddenly stepped on to a different planet. - -A few minutes of waiting—and then mass had begun. - - Resurrexi, et adhuc tecum sum, alleluia; posuisti super me - manum tuam, alleluia: mirabilis facta est scientia tua, - alleluia, alleluia. - -She sat beside David, dreamily telling her beads, and glancing from time -to time at her Missal. - -With signings, and genuflexions, and symbolic kisses, the chorus in their -sexless vestments sang the amœbæan pre-Thespian drama—verses strung -together from David and Isaiah that hinted at a plot, but did not even -_tell_ a story ... till suddenly in the _Sequentia_ an actor broke loose -from the chorus, and tragedy was born: - - Victimæ Paschali laudes immolent Christiani. Agnus redemit - oves: Christus innocens Patri reconciliavit peccatores. Mors et - vita duello conflixere mirando: dux vitæ; mortuus regnat vivus. - - Die nobis, Maria - Quid vidisti in via? - - Sepulcrum Christi viventis - Et gloriam vidi resurgentis - Angelicos testes - Sudarium et vestes. - Surrexit Christus spes mea: - Præcedet vos in Galilæam. - Scimus Christum surrexisse a mortuis vere: - Tu nobis, victor Rex, miserere. - Amen. Alleluia. - -Suddenly an idea came to her that this too was a play, in the particular -sense that she wished her own reactions to be a play, that is to say a -squeezing into a plot of the manifold manifestations of Life; and, if -one chose to play on words, a plot _against_ Life, as well: pruning, -pruning, discarding, shaping, till the myriad dreams and aspirations -of man, the ceaseless struggle, through chemists’ retorts, through the -earth of gardens, through the human brain, of the Unknown to become the -Known was reduced to an imaginary character called God; a nailing of the -myriad ways by which man can become happy and free to a wooden cross a -few cubits high; a reducing of his myriad forms of spiritual sustenance -to a tiny wafer of flour; a tampering, too, with the past, saying “in -the beginning _was_ ...” but Life, noisy, tangible, resilient, supple, -cunning Life, was laughing out there in the streets and fields at the -makers of myths; for it knew that every plot against it was foredoomed to -failure. - -Then they went up to the altar; and, kneeling between the Doña and David, -she received the host on her tongue. - -The Holy Mother—Celestina, the old wise courtesan of Spain, skilled -beyond all others in the distilling of perfumes, in the singing of -spells—she was luring her back, she was luring her back ... in odore -unguentorum tuorum curremus ... what cared Celestina that it was by the -senses and the imagination that she held her victims instead of by the -reason? - -The Rock ... Peter’s Rock ... a Prometheus bound to it for ever, though -the vulture should eat out her heart. - - -5 - -On the drive home Jollypot, who was sitting behind beside the Doña, -remarked meditatively, “How lovely the Easter _Sequentia_ is!... so -sudden and dramatic!” - -“Yes, yes,” said the Doña, who never failed to be irritated by Jollypot’s -enthusiasm over the literary aspect of the Liturgy. “Oh, look at these -trees! Everything is so very early.” - -“I was following in my Missal,” Jollypot went on, “and I was suddenly -struck by the words: Agnus redemit oves—the lamb redeems the sheep—they -seemed to me _so_ lovely: and I wondered ... I wondered if it weren’t -always so ... the lamb redeeming the sheep, I mean ... ‘and a little -child shall lead them,’ if ...” and she lowered her voice, “if little -Jasper with his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament should redeem ... dear -Pepa’s lamb ... do you think?...” - -“What _do_ you mean, Jollypot?” said the Doña severely. - -“Well, I was wondering, dear Mrs. Lane ... if his wonderful child piety -...; if it ... if it mightn’t help dear Pepa.” - -The Doña gave a snort: “The words in the _Sequentia_, Jollypot, refer to -Christ and the Church—what _could_ they have to do with Jasper and Pepa?” -and she gave an involuntary sigh. - -“What do you think of our seminarist?” she asked after a pause, in a low -voice. - -Jollypot, though she had lived with the Doña for years, had not yet -learned to know when her voice was ironical: - -“Oh, I think he’s a _dear_ fellow,” she said enthusiastically, “so _big_ -and _simple_, and _child-like_ and _rugged_, and such a jolly voice! And -sometimes, too, he’s so _pawky_—oh, I think he’s a _delightful_ fellow.” - -The Doña gave a tiny shrug: “He seems to like staying with us very much,” -she said drily. - -“But how could he help it? You are all so jolly to him.” - -“Yes; some of us are very hospitable,” and the Doña’s eyes rested for a -moment on Teresa’s back; “still, one would have thought he might have -recovered from his influenza by now.” - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -1 - -Anna and Jasper came to Plasencia for their Easter holidays, and towards -the end of April Concha and Rory got back from Scotland. It was the first -time Teresa had seen them together since their engagement, and their -relationship was so comfortable and intimate that, to her, it almost -smacked of incest. - -As to the Doña, the presence of Rory in the flesh seemed to undo all the -reconciliatory work of the past two months, and her attitude once more -became uncompromising, her heart bitter and heavy. - -Harry and Arnold came down for the last “week-end” in April; so they were -now quite a big party again, and Teresa did not see so much of David. - -It was dear that Concha was bursting with the glories of Drumsheugh; -but she had no one to tell them to; the Doña and Teresa were out of the -question, and Arnold had sulked with her ever since her engagement. -However, one afternoon when they were sitting in the loggia, she -could keep it in no longer: “I simply _love_ Drumsheugh,” she began; -Arnold immediately started talking to Harry, but to her surprise she -found Teresa clearly prepared to listen sympathetically. “It isn’t -a ‘stately home of England’ sort of thing, you know, but square and -plain and solid, and full of solid Victorian furniture; and the -portraits aren’t ruffles and armour and that sort of thing, but -eighteenth-century-judges-sort-of-people. There’s a perfectly divine -Raeburn of Rory’s great-great-grandmother playing ring-o’-roses with -her children. It’s altogether _very_ eighteenth century ... the sort of -house one can imagine Dr. Johnson staying in, when he was in Scotland, -and very much enjoying the claret and library. And there’s no ‘culture’ -about it—it’s filled with cases of stuffed birds, and stuffed foxes and -things....” - -“_What_, Concha?” cried Arnold, breaking off in the middle of his -sentence to Harry, “did you say _stuffed foxes_? I never thought much of -the Scotch, but I didn’t think they were as bad as that. Do you really -shoot foxes in Scotland, Dundas?” - -Since the engagement he had gone back to calling Rory, “Dundas.” - -Rory was speechless with laughter: “Oh, Concha! What _are_ you talking -about?” he spluttered, and poor Concha, who, since her engagement, had -gone in for being a sporting character, blushed crimson. - -For the first time Teresa saw something both pretty and touching -in Concha’s attitude to life: as a little girl-guide, an Anna, in -fact, passionately collects, badges for efficiency in heterogeneous -activities—sewing, playing _God Save the King_ on the piano, gardening, -tennis, reciting Kipling’s _If_; so Concha collected the various -manifestations of “grown-up-ness”—naughty stories, technical and sporting -expressions, scandal about well-known people; and it was all, really, so -innocent. - -“You got on very well with Colonel Dundas, didn’t you?” she said, turning -the subject to what she knew was a source of gratification. - -“Oh, yes, she scored heavily with Uncle Jimmy,” said Rory proudly. “He’s -in love with her—_really_ in love with her. But I don’t know whether -that’s much of a triumph—he’s the bore of ten clubs.” - -Concha began to count on her fingers: “The Senior, the Travellers’, -Hurlingham, ... er....” - -“The Conservative Club, Edinburgh,” prompted Rory. - -“The Conservative, Edinburgh—what’s the St. Andrews one?” - -“ROYAL and ANCIENT, you goose!” he roared. - -“Oh, yes, of course, Royal and Ancient. Then the North Berwick one—that’s -six. Then there’s....” - -At that moment the Doña arrived for tea, cutting them off for the time -from this grotesque source of pride; as in her presence there could be no -talk of Drumsheugh and “Uncle Jimmy.” - -“Yes, the garden _is_ forging ahead. What I like is roses; do you think -this will be a good year for them? But I do like them to have a smell.” - -“Guy says that Shakespeare is wrong and that there _is_ something in a -name, and that the reason they don’t smell so sweet now is that they’re -called by absurd names like ‘Hugh Dickson’ and ‘Frau Karl Druschke.’” - -“Well, how does he explain that Frau Karl has been called ‘Snow Queen’ -since the War and still hasn’t any smell?” - -“By the way, where _is_ Guy? We haven’t seen him since the dance at -Christmas. Do you remember how queer he was the next morning?” - -“He’s been in Spain, but he should be back soon,” said Arnold, with a -resentful look at Teresa. - -Then Anna and Jasper trotted across the lawn and on to the loggia, both -very grubby; Jasper carrying a watering-can. - -“We’ve been gardening,” said Anna proudly. - -“That ... er ... is a ... er ... self-evident proposition that needs no -demonstration, as the dogs’-meat man said to the cook when she ... er ... -told him he wasn’t a gentleman,” quoted Harry. - -“Darlings, isn’t it time for your own tea? And what _would_ Nanny say? -You really oughtn’t to come to grown-up tea without washing your hands,” -protested Teresa—in vain; for the Doña had already provided each of them -with a large slice of cake. - -Then Jasper’s roving eye perched upon David, meditatively stirring his -tea. He began to snigger: “Silly billy! _You_ can’t make flowers grow. -Anna says so.” - -“Jasper! Don’t be so silly,” said Anna, reddening. - -“But you _said_ so,” whined Jasper. - -“What’s this? What’s it all about?” laughed Rory. - -“Nothing,” said Anna sulkily. - -“Now then; out with it, old thing!” - -“Yes, darling, why should Mr. Munroe make flowers grow?” - -“Oh, well,” and Anna blushed again, “You see, it was about holy water. -I thought if it was _really_ like that Mr. Munroe might bless the water -in our watering-can, so that they’d all grow up in the night ... just to -show whether it was true or not, you know.” - -Harry looked round with an unmistakable expression of paternal pride; -Dick, Arnold, Concha and Rory exploded into their several handkerchiefs; -Jollypot murmured, “Dear little girl!” The Doña looked sphinx-like; and -Teresa glanced nervously at David. - -“I’m awfully sorry, Anna, but I fear I can’t do that for you—for one -thing, I’m not yet a priest,” he answered, blushing crimson. - -“By the way, Mr. Munroe, when _are_ you going to be ordained?” asked the -Doña suavely. “Let me see ... it _could_ be in September, Our Lady’s -birth month, couldn’t it? I read an article by a Jesuit Father the -other day about the ‘Save the Vocations Fund,’ and he said there was no -birthday gift so acceptable to Our Lady as the first mass of a young -priest.” - -The Doña rarely if ever spoke upon matters of faith in public; so -Teresa felt that her words had a definite purpose, and were spoken with -concealed malice. - -“Good God!” muttered Harry; then, turning to Arnold, he said—“it’s ... -it’s ... _astounding_. Birthday presents of young priests! It’s like the -Mountain Mother and her Kouretes!” He spoke in a very low voice; but -Teresa overheard. - -The smell of this half ridiculous, half sinister, little incident soon -evaporated from the atmosphere, and the usual foolish, placid Plasencia -talk gurgled happily on: - -“Well, if this weather goes on we ought soon to be getting the -tennis-court marked ... oh Lord! I wish it was easier to get exercise in -this place.” - -“Well, I’m sure Anna and Jasper would be only too delighted to race you -round the lawn.” - -“Oh, by the way, didn’t you say there was a _real_ tennis court somewhere -in this neighbourhood?” - -“Yes, but it belongs to a noble lord ... oh, by the way, Dad, have you -had that field rolled? If there’s to be hay in it this year, it really -ought to be, you know.” - -“Yes, yes, but a heifer’s far more valuable after she’s calved, far -better wait.” - -“Does Buckingham Palace make its own light or get it from the town?” - -“From the town, I should think.” - -“What happens then if there’s a strike of the electric light people?” - -“Oh, what a great thought! Worthy of Anna.” - -“It’s a curious thing that ... er ... a reference to ... er ... LIQUID -in any form inevitably tickles an undergraduate: if I ... er ... er ... -happen to remark in a lecture that ... er ... MOISTURE is necessary to a -plant, the room ... er ... ROCKS WITH LAUGHTER FOR FIVE MINUTES!” - -And so on, and so on. - -But for Teresa, the shadow of that _other_ plot had fallen over the -silver and china and tea-cups, over the healthy English faces, over the -tulips and wallflowers in the garden; and over the quiet view, made by -the sowing and growing and reaping of the sunbrowned rain-washed year; -but it has a ghost—the other; shadowy Liturgical Year, whose fields are -altars in dim churches and whose object, by means of inarticulate chants -and hierophantic gestures, is to blow some cold life into a still-born -Idea, then to let it die, then, by a febrile reiteration of psalms and -prophecies, to galvanise it again into life. - -And David, sitting there a little apart, though he could talk ably about -business and economics and agriculture—he was merely a character in the -Plot. He was like a ghost, but a ghost that dwarfed and unsubstantialised -the living. He was a true son of that race—her race, too, through the -“dark Iberians”—who, carrying their secret in their hearts, were driven -by the Pagans into the fastnesses of the hills, the hills whence, during -silent centuries, they drew the strength of young men’s dreams, the -strength of old men’s visions, and within whose cup quietly, unceasingly, -they plied their secret craft: turning bread into God. And though in -time St. Patrick (so says one of the legends), betrayed the secret to -Ireland, and St. Columba, his descendant in Christ, to England, and they, -the men of the Scottish hills, lost all memory of it in harsh and homely -heresies, yet once it had been theirs—theirs only. - -Yes; but it was all nonsense—a myth, a plot. She was becoming hag-ridden -again; she must be careful. - - -2 - -One afternoon in the beginning of May, when Teresa came on to the loggia -at tea-time, she found no one there but David, sitting motionless. He -looked at her gravely, and said: - -“The doctor came this afternoon.” - -“Did he? What did he say?” - -“He said I was all right now.” - -“That’s splendid.” - -“So ... I must be getting back.” - -“When?” - -“Well, you see, I’ve no right to stay a minute longer than I need. And so -... if it’s convenient ... well, really, I should be going to-morrow.” - -“Should you?” And there was the minimum of conventional regret in her -voice, “I’ll tell Rendall to pack for you.” - -“I can pack for myself ... thank you,” he said gruffly. - -They were silent. His eyes absently swept over the view, then the -border, and then lingered for a few seconds on the double row of ancient -hawthorns, which, before the days of Plasencia and its garden, had stood -on either side of a lane leading to a vanished village, and then fastened -on the gibbous moon, pressed, like the petal of a white rose, against the -blue sky, idly enjoying, as it were from the wings, the fragrance and -tempered sunshine, while it waited for its cue to come on and play for -the millionth millionth time its rôle of the amorous potent ghost. - -“You’ve all been very kind to me ... you, specially,” he said. - -“Oh ... it’s been a pleasure,” she answered dully. - -“I’d like—if you could do with me—to come back for a wee visit in the -summer ... before I say my first mass.” Then he added, with a little -smile, “but maybe your mother won’t want to have me.” - -“Oh ... I’m sure ... she’d be delighted,” she said, with nervous little -catch in her voice. - -He looked at her, squarely, sombrely: “No, she wouldn’t be delighted ... -but I’ll come all the same,” and he gave a short laugh. - -“Are you ... you ... when are you going to be ordained?” - -“It will be the beginning of October, I think,” and again his eyes -wandered absently over the view, the border, the hedge of hawthorn; and -her eyes followed his. - -The Plot ... the Popish Plot.... “Please to remember the fifth of -November,” ... how many times Guy Fawkes must have been burned in that -vanished village! On frosty nights when the lamp-light and fire-light -glowed through the cosy red curtains of the inn parlour, and the boys -wore red worsted mufflers, and stamped to keep their feet warm, and -held their hands out to the flame of the bonfire. For they had been -wise English people who had lived a hundred years ago in that vanished -village; _they_ had known what it all came to: that there was Spring, -Summer, Autumn, Winter, then Spring again; that there was good ale to be -had at the Saracen’s Head, for the paying; that Goody Green, who kept the -shop, gave short measure, but this did not cause her to be pinched by -elves, nor to come to a bad end; that the parson was a kind man, though -a wheezy one, and liked his glass of ale, and that whatever he might say -in his sermons, the daffodil, at any rate, _died_ on Easter Day; that -very few of the wives and mothers had gone to Church maids, but they were -none the worse for that, while Marjory from the farm up by Hobbett’s -Corner hadn’t gone to Church at all, because she had been seduced by a -fine young gentleman staying at the Saracen’s Head to shoot wild duck, -and that, in consequence, she had gone away to London, where she had -married a grocer’s apprentice, who became in time an alderman, and drove -her about in a fine coach; that William Hobson ran away to sea, and was -never heard of again; that Stan Huckle had emigrated to America, whence -he wrote that he had become a Methodist, because they had strawberry -festivals with lumps of frozen cream in their chapel; in fact, that it -was no use seeking for meanings and morals, because there were none. -And then, one Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter, one took to one’s bed, -and after a time one’s toes grew cold, and the room grew dark, and one -heard a voice saying: “Paw ole man! The end’s near now. Well, it’ll be -a blessed release—reely.” And that was all, except, before the dim eyes -closed, a memory ... or was it the sudden scent of May? Once long ago, -in that hawthorn lane, beneath the moon, migratory dreams had seemed to -flock together from all quarters like homing birds, and the Future had -suddenly sprung up, and all the stars snowed down on it, till it too was -a hawthorn bush covered with a million small white blossoms, in which, -next spring, the birds would build their nests. - -“I have noticed,” she said, “the Scotch have a great sense of the -‘sinfulness of sin.’” - -“Yes ... I think that’s true,” he answered. - -“St. Paul invented sin, I suppose; Jesus didn’t.” - -“St. Paul invent sin! You know that’s not true—it’s as old as apples,” -and he smiled down on her with that tender, indulgent smile that made her -feel like a little girl. - - * * * * * - -At tea he told the Doña what the doctor had said: - -“And so I’ll not trespass any longer on your hospitality, Mrs. Lane,” -he added, with the laborious gentility probably learnt from his aunt in -Inverness. - -“Oh, well, it has been a great pleasure having you,” said the Doña, with -more geniality than she had shown him for weeks, “I’m sure we shall all -miss you—shan’t we, Teresa?” - -“I’m sure we shall,” she answered, in a calm, cool voice; no tinge of -colour touching her pale cheeks, but a sudden spark of hostility and -triumph leaping into her eyes as she met those of the Doña. - -“I should like to come and see you all again, before I say my first -mass,” he said, looking the Doña squarely in the face. - -“Oh, yes ... certainly ... but we generally go away in the summer.” - -“I was thinking ... the end of September, maybe?” - -“Oh, we’ll sure to be back by then,” cut in Dick, always on the alert to -take the edge off his wife’s grudging invitations, “Yes, you come to us -at the end of September; though, for the sake of the children’s garden, -it’s a pity it couldn’t be _after_ your ordination!” - - -3 - -The weather was so warm that after dinner they went and sat out upon -the lawn; but about half-past nine the elders found it chilly and went -indoors. - -“What about a walk?” said Concha, getting up. - -“Good scheme!” said Rory. - -“Are you coming, darling?” she asked Teresa, going up to her and laying -her soft cheek against hers. - -“No, Puncher, I don’t think so,” she said, smiling up at her; and she -was touched to see how she flushed with pleasure at the old, childish -pet-name, grown, these last years, so unfamiliar. - -So Teresa and David sat on together, watching Concha and Rory glimmering -down the border till they melted into the invisible view. - -It was a glorious night. The lawns of the sky were dusty with the may of -stars. The moon, no longer flower-like and idle, shone a cold masterpiece -of metallurgy. The air was laden with the perfumes of shrubs and flowers. -Teresa noticed that the perfumes did not come simultaneously, but one -after another; like notes of a tune picked out with one finger—lilac, -may, wallflower.... - -“I can smell sweetbriar!” cried David suddenly, a strange note of triumph -in his voice, “it’s like a Scotch tune—‘Oh, my love is like a red red -rose’!” and he laughed, a little wildly. - -Teresa’s heart began to beat very fast, and seizing at random upon the -first words that occurred to her, she said, “Concha’s like a red red -rose,” and began to repeat mechanically: - - “Red as a rose is she; - Nodding their heads before her goes - The merry minstrelsy.” - -“I wasn’t thinking of her ...” he said. “I wasn’t ... Oh, my love is like -the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley ... it’s all the same”; and -then, abruptly: “Look! There’s the moon. She’s always the same—Scotland, -Africa, in the trenches, here. She’s like books—Homer and the rest—in -whatever land you open them, they just say the same thing that they did a -hundred years ago.” - -Far away a night-express flashed and shrieked through the view; then an -owl hooted. - -“So you are going back to-morrow,” she said. - -“Yes.... Hark! There’s the sweetbriar again,” and he began to sing -triumphantly: - - “And I will come again, my Love, - Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.” - -He turned and looked at her with strangely shining eyes: “I hear you -through the wall, getting up and going to bed every night and every -morning. It makes me feel sick sometimes, like the smell of iodoform at -the front; that’s a nice way of putting it!” and again he laughed wildly: -“like the smell of sweetbriar! like the smell of the mass! Good-night,” -and he got up hurriedly and strode towards the house. Then he came back: -“Get up and come in,” he said gently; “it’s getting cold and damp,” and -he pulled her up with a cool, firm hand. - -They went in, lit their candles in the hall and said good-night at their -bedroom doors; quietly, distantly. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -1 - -David left early next morning; a stiff, genteel little letter of thanks -came from him to the Doña, and then, for most of them, he might never -have been. - -Each day life at Plasencia became more and more focused on the -approaching wedding; and the Doña and Jollypot spent hours in the -morning-room making lists of guests and writing invitations. - -As soon as David had gone Teresa began to write—the mediæval books had -done their work and were no longer needed. - -St. Ignatius de Loyóla, in his esoteric instructions to his disciples, -gives the following receipt for conjuring up a vision of Christ -Crucified: to obtain a vision, he says, one must begin by visualising -the background—first, then, conjure up before you a great expanse of -intensely blue sky, such as the sky must be in Palestine, next, picture -against this sky a range of harsh, deeply indented hills, red and green -and black, then wait; and suddenly upon this background will flash a -cross with Christ nailed to it. - -Teresa had got her background; and now the vision came. - -But she was doubtful as to whether it was a vision of the Past such as -De Quincey had had in his dream, or Monticelli shown in his picture; for -one thing, she found an almost irresistible pleasure in intagliating her -writing with antiquarian details, and indeed it was more a vision of a -_situation_, a situation adorned by the Past, than a vision of the Past -itself. - -She wrote all day; neither thinking nor reading, but closely guarding her -mind from the contamination of outside ideas. - -The play—the plot—was turning out very differently from what she had -expected; and as well as being a transposing of life at Plasencia, -it was, she realised with the clear-sightedness of her generation, -performing the function assigned to dreams by Freud—namely, that of -expressing in symbols the desires of which one is ashamed.... Though, for -her own reasons, she shrank from it, she was keenly aware of Concha’s -sympathy these days. It seemed that Concha had that rare, mysterious gift -that Pepa had had too—the gift of loving. - -Guy came down in June for a week-end; with Teresa he was like a sulky -child, but she saw that his eyes were haggard, and she felt very sorry -for him. - -“What about that Papist—I mean Roman Catholic, the stolid Scot?” he asked -at tea. - -“Oh, I think he’s all right. He’s a dear thing ...” said Concha, -hurriedly flinging herself into the breach. - -Teresa saw the Doña fumbling for her _lorgnette_. She had found her -_tête-à-tête_ with Guy after his arrival—had she been saying anything to -him? - -“Uncomfortable, half-baked creature!” said Guy angrily; “he’s like a -certain obscure type of undergraduate that used to lurk in the smaller -colleges. They were so obscure that no one had ever so much as seen -them, but their praises would be sung by even more obscure, though, -unfortunately, less invisible admirers, who wore things which I’m sure -they called _pince-nez_, and ran grubby societies, and they would stop -one at lectures—simply sweating with enthusiasm—to tell one that Clarke, -or Jones, or whatever the creature’s name was, had read a _marvellous_ -paper on Edward Carpenter or Tagore at the Neolithic Pagans, or that it -was Clarke that had made some disgusting little arts-and-crafts Madonna -on the chimneypiece. And then years later you hear that Clarke is chief -of a native tribe in one of the islands of the Pacific, or practising -yoga in Burmah ... some mysterious will to adventure, I suppose, but all -so inconceivably indiscriminating and obscure and half-baked! Well, at -any rate, the veil of obscurity has been rent and at last I have seen -“Clarke” in the flesh!” and he ended his shrill, gabbled complaint with a -petulant laugh. - -“He’s not in the least like that, Guy,” laughed Concha; “he’s more like -some eighteenth-century highland shepherd teaching himself Greek out of a -Greek Testament,” she added, rather prettily. - -“Yes, and having religious doubts, which are resolved by an examination -of the elaborate anatomy of a horse’s skull found on the moors—it’s all -the same, only more picturesque.” - -“And why are you so angry with our friend Mr. Munroe, Guy?” asked the -Doña. - -“Oh, I don’t know! I’m like Nietsche, I hate ‘women, cows, Scotsmen, and -all democrats,’” and he gave an irritated little wriggle. - -How waspish the little creature had become! But who can draw up a scale -of suffering and say that an aching heart is easier to bear than a -wounded vanity? - -“Well, you haven’t told us anything about Spain,” said Concha. - -“Oh, there’s nothing to tell ... it’s a threadbare theme; _Childe Harold_ -has already been written.... Of course, the theme of Don Juan lends -itself to perennial treatment....” - -The Doña laughed softly: “But it is so unjust that Don Juan Tenorio is -supposed only to be found in Spain!” - -“No more unjust than that Jesus Christ should be looked upon as a Jew.” - -“_Guy!_” - -“That is really the _comble_ to the insults we have put upon that -unfortunate people.” - -“Guy! I will _not_ have you speaking like that in my house,” said the -Doña very sternly. - -“I beg your pardon,” he muttered, in some confusion; and then took up his -shrill monologue: “As a matter of fact, Don Juan is the greatest glory of -Spain; he is own brother to Sancho Panza—a superb pair; they are the true -αὐτόχθων, made of the mud of _this_ planet, and they understand life as -it is meant to be lived down here. The rest of us shriek, like Coleridge, -for a ‘bread not made of wheat’.... Yes, we behave idiotically, like -creatures in some fable that has not yet been written, when we want -cheese for supper, we take our bow and arrows and go and shoot at the -moon—the moon, which is the cradle of the English race....” On and on -went his voice, the others sitting round in silence, to conceal their -embarrassment or boredom. - -“To return to Don Juan, I see there is a new theory that he is an -_Eniautos Daimon_—one of those year-spirits that die every winter and -vegetation dies with them, and are born again in spring with the crops -and things ... seeds, and crops and souls dying and springing up again -with Don Juan. So there is hope for us all, _sic itur ad astra_—rakes -during our life, manure afterwards; so horticultural! I wonder if our -friend Mr. Munroe would make a good year-spirit?” - -This time they had beaten her: the blood rushed to Teresa’s cheeks. - -“I expect he would only be able to make oats grow—‘man’s food in -Scotland,’” laughed Concha, as if it were merely the ordinary Plasencia -bandying of conceits; “I think Dad would make a better one,” she added; -“he’s so good about flowers and crops and things, and the farmers and -people say he has ‘green fingers,’ because everything he plants is sure -to grow.” - -Teresa felt sincerely grateful to her: she had cooled the situation, -and, as well, had given the whole conversation about Don Juan an amazing -significance; the play would have to be re-cast. - - -2 - -On Monday morning Teresa had a little talk with Guy before he went -away—after all, he was but a fantastic little creature, powerless to hurt -her; and he was suffering. - -“Don’t be cross with me, Guy,” she said, laying her hand on his sleeve; -“it’s so difficult to feel ... to feel as you want me to ... you see, -it’s so difficult with some one one has known so many years; besides, you -know, you can’t have it both ways,” and she smiled. - -“How do you mean?” he asked sulkily. - -“Well, you see, you’re a poet. We take _poetry_ seriously, but sometimes -we ... well, we smile a little at _poets_. _Sub specie æternitatis_—isn’t -that the expression? You are _sub specie æternitatis_, and the worst of -being under that species is that both one’s value and one’s values are -apt to be ... well, snowed over by the present. Milton’s daughters, at -the actual moment that they were grumbling about having to have _Paradise -Lost_ dictated to them, were really quite justified—the darning of their -fichus or ... or young Praise-the-Lord Simpkins waiting for them by the -stile were much more important _at that moment_. It’s only afterwards, -when all these things—the young man, the stile and the fichus—have turned -long ago into dust, and _Paradise Lost_ grows more glorious every year, -that they turn into frivolous, deplorable fools. You can’t have it both -ways, old Guy.” - -Her instinct had been true—this was the only possible balm. - -Now, at last, he knew what she really thought of him—she mentioned him in -the same breath with Milton; she thought him a genius. - -He felt wildly happy and excited, but, of course, he did not allow this -to show in his face. - -Then he looked at her: the pointed arch her mouth went into when she -smiled; the beautiful oval teeth, the dark, rather weary eyes, for the -moment a tender, slightly quizzical smile lurking in their corners ... -oh! he wanted this creature for his own; he _must_ get her. - - * * * * * - -“What about this thing you’re writing?” he asked with a little gulp. - -“What thing?” - -“Concha said you were writing something. What is it ... a ‘strong’ novel?” - -“It’s ... it’s historical, I suppose.” - -“Oh, I see—‘historical fiction.’” - -“It isn’t fiction at all; it’s a play.” - -“Well, anyway, may I read it?” - -“Oh no! It isn’t finished ... it....” - -“We must get it acted, when it is.” - -“Oh, no!” and she shrank back, as if he had threatened to strike her. - -“Of course it must be acted; it’s _much_ better than having to struggle -with publishers, that’s the devil—cracking one’s knuckles against the -Bodley Head, tilting with Mr. Heinemann’s Windmill, foundering in Mr. -Murray’s Ship ... it’s....” - -“But nothing would induce me to have it either published or acted. It’s -just for myself.” - -“Oh, but you’ll change your mind when it’s finished—it’s biological, one -can’t help it; the act of parturition isn’t complete till the thing is -published or produced—you’ll see. I was up at Cambridge with the chap who -has started this company of strolling players—they’re very ‘cultured’ and -‘pure’ and all that sort of thing, but they don’t act badly. If you send -it to him, I’ll tell him he must produce it. They might come and do it -here—on the lawn.” - -“No! no! no!” she cried in terror, “I couldn’t bear it. I don’t want it -acted at all.” - -He looked at her, a little impishly: “You mark my words, it _will_ be -acted ... here on the lawn.” - - - - -CHAPTER X - - -1 - -It was the eve of Concha’s wedding; the house was full, and overflowing -into Rudge’s cottage, into Rendall’s cottage, and into the houses of -neighbours: there were Guy and his parents, Sir Roger and Lady Cust, -there was Colonel Dundas, there was “Crippin” Arbuthnot, Rory’s major who -was to be best man, and Elfrida Penn, who was to be chief bridesmaid, and -Harry Sinclair and his children, and Hugh Mallam and Dick’s cousin and -partner, Edward Lane. - -A wedding is a _thing_—as concrete and compact as a gold coin stamped -with a date and a symbol; for, though of the substance of Time, it has -the qualities of Matter; colour, shape, tangibleness. Or rather, perhaps -it freezes Time into the semblance of Eternity, but does not rob it of -its colours: these it keeps as Morris’s gods did theirs in the moonlight. - -We have all awakened on a winter’s morning to the fantastic joke that -during the night a heavy fall of snow has played on Space; just such a -joke does a wedding play on Time. - -And who can keep out the _estantigua_, the demon army of the restless -dead, screaming in the wind and led by Hellequin? - -Now Hellequin is the old romance form of Harlequin, and Harlequin leads -the wedding revels. But it is in vain that, like Ophelia, he “turns life, -death and fate into prettiness and favour”: we recognise the eyes behind -the mask, we know of what army he is captain. - -And the wedding guests themselves; though each, individually, was -anodyne, even commonplace, yet, under that strange light, they were -fantastic, sinister—they were _folk_. - -In her childhood that word had always terrified Teresa—there was her -old nightmare of the Canterbury Pilgrims, knight, franklin, wife of -Bath, streaming down the chimney with strange mocking laughter to keep -Walpurgis-night in a square tiled kitchen.... Bishops, priests, deacons, -sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, lectors, confessors, virgins, widows, -and all the holy people of God. - -Yes, they were _folk_. - -How pawky Edward Lane was looking—uncannily humorous and shrewd! What -six-plied, cynical thing was he about to say to Jasper? - -However, what he did say was: “You don’t get cake like that at school—do -you, young man?” - -And Lady Cust, with her light rippling laugh and her observant -eyes—noticing the cut of one’s skirt and whether one asked her if she -_took_ sugar in her tea—when her face was in repose it was sad, like that -of a Christian slave in the land of the Saracens. - -“Oh yes, when we were in Pau we motored over to Lourdes, when one -of the pilgrimages was on. Some of them ... well, really, they were -like goblins, poor creatures ... appalling!” and she actually smiled -reminiscently. - -Teresa remembered Guy’s having told her that the favourite amusement of -his Brabazon uncles when they were drunk had been potting with their -revolvers at the village idiot. - -She looked at Colonel Dundas: solemn, heavy, with a walrus moustache, -and big, owl-like spectacles, each glass bisected with a straight line; -at Sir Roger Cust, a dapper “hard-bitten” little man, with small, sharp -gray eyes—surely _they_ were not sinister. - -“Old Tommy Cunningham!” Sir Roger was saying; “that takes one a long way -back. Wasn’t he Master at one time of the Linlithgowshire?” - -“Yes ... from eighteen ... eighteen seventy-five, I think, to eighty ... -eighty-_six_, I think. I couldn’t tell you for certain, off-hand, but -I’ll look it up in my diary,” said Colonel Dundas; “he was a first-rate -shot, too,” he added. - -“Magnificent!” agreed Sir Roger, “Aye, úhu, aye, úhu. D’you remember how -he used always to say that?” - -“So he did! Picked it up from the keepers and gillies, I suppose.” - -“He was the coolest chap I’ve ever known. Do you remember his mare White -Heather?” - -“Yes ... let me see ... she was out of Lady of the Lake, by ... by....” - -“Yes, yes, that’s the one. Well, you know, he had _thousands_ on her -for the National, and I was standing near him, and when she came in ... -third, I think it was....” - -“Fourth I _think_, but....” - -“Fourth, then. Well, old Tommy just shut up his glasses with a snap and -said, ‘Aye, úhu, well, poor lassie, _I_ thought she’d win somehow.’ -Didn’t turn a hair, and he’d thousands on her!” - -They were silent for a few seconds; then Sir Roger sighed and smiled: -“Well, all that was a long time ago, Jimmy. _Eheu fugaces, Posthume, -Posthume_.... Isn’t that how it goes, Guy? Funny how these old tags stick -in one’s mind!” and he rubbed his chin and smiled complacently; and -Teresa felt sure he would wake up in the night and chuckle with pride -over the aptness of his Latin quotation. - -Yes, but what was “old Tommy Cunningham” doing here? For he brought with -him a rush of dreams and of old cold hopes, and a world as dead as the -moon—dead men, dead horses, dead hounds. - -Aye, úhu, fugax es, Cunningham, Cunningham. - -“Don’t you adore albinos?” shrilled Elfrida Penn in her peacock scream, -while that intensely conventional little man, “Crippin” Arbuthnot grew -crimson to the top of his bald head, and Lady Cust’s face began to -twitch—clearly, she was seized by a violent desire to giggle. - -“Perhaps you would like to go up to your room, Lady Cust? You must be -tired,” said the Doña. - -“Well, thank you very much, perhaps it would be a good plan; though it’s -difficult to tear oneself away from this lovely garden—_How_ you must -love it!” and she turned to Teresa; then again to the Doña: “I have been -envying you your delphiniums—they’re much finer than ours, ain’t they, -Roger? Do you cinder them in the spring?” and they began walking towards -the house, talking about gardens; but all the time they were watching -each other, wary, alert, hostile. - -“What a delicious room! And such roses!” Lady Cust exclaimed when they -reached her bedroom. - -Her maid had already unpacked; and on her dressing-table was unfurled -one of these folding series of leather photograph frames, and each one -contained a photograph of Francis, her eldest son, who had been killed in -the War. There were several of him in the uniform of the Rifle Brigade; -one of him in cricket flannels, one on a horse, two or three in khaki; -a little caricature of him had also been unpacked, done by a girl in -their neighbourhood, when he was a Sandhurst cadet; at the bottom of it -was scrawled in a large, unsophisticated feminine hand: _Wishing you a -ripping Xmas_, and then two or three marks of exclamation. - -It belonged, that little inscription, to the good old days of the reign -of King Edward, when girls wore sailor hats in the country, and shirts -with stiff collars and ties, when every one, or so it seemed to Lady -Cust, was normal and simple and comfortable, and had the same ambitions, -namely, to hit hard at tennis, and to ride straight to hounds. - -“Were you at Ascot this year?” “Have you been much to the Opera this -season?” “What do you think of the mallet for this year? Seems to _me_ it -would take a crane to lift it!” - -Such, in those days, had been the sensible conversational openings; -while, recently, the man who had taken her into dinner had begun by -asking her the name of her butcher; another by asking her if she liked -string. Mad! Quite mad! - -Of course, there were cultured people in those days too, but they were -just as easy to talk to as the others. “Do you sing Guy d’Hardelot’s ‘I -know a Lovely Garden?’ There’s really _nothing_ to touch his songs.” -“Have you been to the Academy yet? And oh, _did_ you see that picture -next to Sargeant’s portrait of Lady ——? It’s of Androcles taking a thorn -out of _such_ a jolly lion’s paw.” “Oh yes, of course, that’s from dear -old Omar, isn’t it? There’s no one like him, is there? You know, I like -the Rubaiyat really better than Tennyson.” - -And now—there were strikes, and nearly all their neighbours had either -let or sold their places; and Guy had the most idiotic ideas and the most -extraordinary friends; and Francis.... - -The Doña’s eyes rested for a moment on the photographs; she was too -short-sighted to be able to distinguish any details; but she could see -that they were of a young man, and guessed that he was the son who had -been killed. - -“It’s much better for _her_,” she thought bitterly, “she hasn’t the fear -for his soul to keep her awake.” - -Lady Cust saw that she had noticed the photographs, and a dozen invisible -spears flew out to guard her grief. Then she remembered having heard that -the Doña had lost a daughter: “But that’s not the same as one’s eldest -son—besides, she has grandchildren.” - -Aloud she said, “One good thing about having no daughter, I always feel, -is that one is saved having a wedding in the house. It must mean such -endless organising and worry, and what with servants being so difficult -nowadays.... But this is such a perfect house for a wedding—so gay! We -are so shut in with trees. Dear old Rory, I’m so fond of him; he’s my -only nephew, and ... er ... Concha is such a pretty thing.” - -It was clear that at this point the Doña was expected to praise Rory; but -she merely gave a vague, courteous smile. - -“I have heard so much about you all from my Guy,” continued Lady Cust; -“he is so devoted to you all, and you have been _so_ good to him.” - -“Oh! we are all very fond of Guy,” said the Doña stiffly. - -“Well, it’s very nice of you to say so—he’s a dear old thing,” she -paused, “and your other daughter, Teresa, she’s tremendously clever, -isn’t she? I should so love to get to know her, but I’m afraid she’d -despise me—I’m _such_ a fool!” and she gave her rippling laugh. - -The Doña, again, only smiled conventionally. - -“Well, it’s all ...” and Lady Cust gave a little sigh. “You see, Rory was -my only sister’s only child, and she died when he was seven, so he has -been almost like my own son. I wonder ... don’t you think it’s ... it’s a -little sudden?” - -“What is?” asked the Doña icily. - -“Well, they haven’t known each other very long, have they? I don’t know -... marriage ... is so ...” - -So this foolish, giggling, pink and white woman was not pleased about the -marriage! She probably thought Concha was not good enough for her nephew. - -And the Doña who, for the last few days, had been half hoping that the -Immaculate Conception herself, star-crowned, blue-robed, would to-morrow -step down from the clouds to forbid the banns and save her namesake from -perdition—the Doña actually found herself saying with some heat: “They’ve -known each other for nearly a year; that is surely a long time, these -days. I see no reason why it shouldn’t be a most happy marriage.” - -“Oh, I’m _sure_ ... you know ... one always ...” murmured Lady Cust. - -“Well, I must leave you to your rest. You have everything that you want?” -and the Doña sailed out of the room. - -Lady Cust smiled a little, and then sighed. - -Dear old Rory! And what would Mab, her dead sister, think of it all? Oh, -why had it not been she that had died in those old, happy days? - -She went to her dressing-table and took up the folding leather frame. -They were the photographs of a very beautiful young man, a true -Brabazon—a longer limbed, merrier eyed Rory, with a full, rather insolent -mouth. - -Yes, it was funny—she had been apt to call him by the names of her dead -brothers: “Jack! Geoffrey! Desmond! _Francis_, I mean.” She had never had -any difficulty in understanding Francis—how they used to laugh together! - -She remembered how she used to dread his marriage; jealously watching him -with his favourite partners at tennis and at dances, and suspiciously -scanning the photographs of unknown and improperly pretty young ladies -in his bedroom: _Best of luck! Rosie; Ever your chum, Vera_—sick at -the thought of perhaps having to welcome a musical-comedy actress as -Francis’s wife. - -If only she had known! For now, were she suddenly to wake up and find -it was for Francis’s wedding that she was here—the bride Concha Lane, -or that extraordinary Miss Penn, or, even, “Rosie” or “Vera,” her heart -would burst, she would go mad with happiness. - -And she had a friend who actually dared to be heartbroken because she had -suddenly got a letter from her only son, telling her that he had been -married at a registry to a war-widow, whom she knew to be a tenth-rate -little minx with bobbed hair and the mind of a barmaid. - -But Francis ... she would never be at his wedding. She would never hear -his voice again—Francis was dead. - - * * * * * - -When, an hour later, Sir Roger looked in on his way to dress, he found -her lying on the sofa, reading the _Sketch_, smiling and serene. - -“Well, May,” he said, “I saw you! You were on the point of disgracing -yourself just before you went upstairs. _Extraordinary_ thing! Will you -never get over this trick of giggling? You simply have no self-control, -darling.” - -“I _know_, isn’t it dreadful? Well, what do you think of ’em all?” - -“Oh, they seem all right. Rory’s girl’s extraordinary pretty—pretty -manners, too.” - -“Charming! ‘I should lo-o-ove to,’” and she reproduced admirably Concha’s -company voice. “However,” she went on, “we have a great deal to be -thankful for—it might have been Miss Penn. ‘Don’t you ado-o-ore albinos?’ -Oh, I shall _never_ forget it ... and Major Arbuthnot’s face! Still, if -it had been she, I must say I should have loved to see the sensation -produced on Edinburgh by old Jimmy’s walking down Princes Street with -her.” - -Sir Roger gave a hoarse chuckle. - - -2 - -As it was too large a party to get comfortably into the dining-room, a -big tent had been pitched on the lawn, and several long narrow tables -joined together, and there they dined, an ill-assorted company. - -At one end Dr. Sinclair was shouting to Lady Cust, “Well, I’d send him to -that co-education place, but, unfortunately, they don’t ... er ... LEARN -anything there. They make the fourth form read Tolstoy’s _Resurrection_, -which is not ... er ... only the most ... er ... TRASHY of all the works -of genius, but the only ... er ... _lesson_ to be learned from it is the -... er ... inadvisability of ... er ... SEDUCING A RUSSIAN PEASANT GIRL, -and ... er ... unfortunately, an ... er ... er ... English schoolboy -hasn’t many opportunities of doing that ... er ... er....” - -He looked at her, slightly puzzled—her face was pink with suppressed -laughter; but, as she was meant to laugh, why suppress it? - -Elfrida Penn was terrifying “Crippin” Arbuthnot by searching questions as -to whether the erotic adventures of his schooldays had been similar to -those described in a recent novel about life at a public school. - -Edward Lane was saying to Jollypot, “Yes, before my niece—Olive Jackson, -you know—went to school, I said to her, ‘my advice to you is: _keep your -hands clean_.’ I always....” - -“Oh, Mr. Lane, that was beautiful!” cried Jollypot. - -“Yes, I always say a lady can be known by the way she keeps her _hands_.” - -Jollypot’s face fell. - -But Dick and Hugh, at any rate, yelling at each other across the -intervening forms of Concha and Rory, were in perfect harmony. “I say, -Dick, do you remember old Bright, the butler at your father’s? And how -angry he used to be when we asked him if he was any relation of John -Bright?” - -“Yes, rather; and do you remember how he used to say, ‘Port, claret, -sherry, madeira, sir?’ always in that order.” - -“Yes, and how he used to puff it down one’s neck? And the severe way your -mother used to say, ‘Neither, thank you, Bright’!” - -Then, from the other end, they would catch sight of the Doña glaring at -them indignantly through her _lorgnette_, and Dick would turn hurriedly -to Lady Cust. - -As to Teresa, she was indulging in that form of intoxication that has -been described before—that of æsthetically withdrawing herself from a -large, chattering company. Once when she was doing it David had guessed, -and had whispered to her, “The laird’s been deed these twa hoors, but -I wisna for spoiling guid company,” in reference to a host who had -inconspicuously died, sitting bolt upright at the head of his table, at -about the third round of port. - -A branch, or something, outside was casting a shadow on the tent’s canvas -wall—as usual, it was in the form of Dante’s profile. She had seen it in -patches of damp on ceilings, in burning coals, in the clouds, in shadows -cast on the white walls of the bath-room. - -Perhaps he had not really looked like that at all, and the famous fresco -portrait had been originally merely a patch of damp, elaborated into the -outline of a human profile by some wag of the fourteenth century, and -called Dante; and perhaps the Dante he meant was not the poet at all, but -some popular buffoon, Pantaloon or Harlequin, in the comedies at street -corners—the Charlie Chaplin, in fact, of his age.... - -But for some time Colonel Dundas had been booming away in her right ear, -and it was high time she should listen. - -“... _always a note-book on the links, and every shot recorded_—it’s a -golden rule. I’ve advised more than one Amateur Champion to follow it. -You see my point, don’t you? The next time you play on the same links -you whip out your note-book and say, ‘Let me see—_Muirfield, sixth hole, -Sept. 5, 1920_: hit apparently good drive down centre of the course, -found almost impossible approach shot owing to cross bunkers. _N.B. Keep -to the left at the sixth hole._’ You see my point, don’t you?” - -Opposite to them, Guy was screaming excitedly to Elfrida Penn, who -seemed to be sucking in his words through her thick lips: “Of course, -there’s _nothing_ so beautiful and significant, from the point of view of -composition, as a lot of people sitting at a narrow table—it’s the making -of the Christian religion. Aubrey Beardsley ought to have done a _Cena_: -the Apostles, in curly white wigs like these little tight clustering -roses—Dorothy Perkins, or whatever they’re called—and black masks, -sitting down one side of a narrow refectory table with plates piled up -with round fruits, the wall behind them fluted and garlanded in stucco, -St. John, his periwigged head on Jesus’ shoulder, leering up at him, -and Judas, sitting a little apart, a white Pierrot, one finger pressed -against his button mouth, his eyes round with horror and glee....” - -“Yes, every year I was in India I read it through, from _cover to -cover_,” boomed Colonel Dundas proudly. (Oh yes, of course, Dobbin -and the _History of the Punjab_!) “It’s a wonderful style. He comes -next to Shakespeare, in my estimation.” (Not Dobbin and the _History of -the Punjab_, then!) “Yes, every year I read the whole of the _French -Revolution_ through from cover to cover—a very great book. And when, -by mistake, John Stuart Mill burned the manuscript, what do you think -Carlyle did?” - -“I don’t know. What did he do?” - -“He sat down and read through all the works of Fenimore Cooper—read ’em -through from _beginning to end_,” and he stared at her in solemn triumph. - -“Really?” she gasped, “I don’t quite understand. Fenimore Cooper—he wrote -about Red Indians, didn’t he? Why did he read _him_?” - -“_Why?_ To distract his mind, of course. Extraordinary pluck!” and he -glared at her angrily. - -At this point Sir Roger, who had not been making much way with the Doña, -leaned across the table, and said, “I say, Jimmy, Mrs. Lane and I have -been talking about Gib.—did I ever tell you about the time I dined with -your old Mess there? Owing to my being a connection of yours the Colonel -asked me to choose a tune for the pipes;” then, turning to the Doña, -he said in parenthesis, “I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard the -bagpipes, but—don’t tell Colonel Dundas—we don’t think much of ’em this -side of the border.” Then again to Colonel Dundas, “Well, for the life of -me, I couldn’t remember the name of a tune, and then suddenly the _Deil -amang the Tailors_ came into my head, so out I came with it, as pleased -as Punch. Well, I thought the Colonel looked a bit grim, and I saw ’em -all looking at each other, but the order was given to the piper, and he -got going, and, by gad, it _was_ a tune—nearly took the roof off the -place! I thought I should be deaf for life—turned out to be the loudest -tune they’d got;” then, again to the extremely bored Doña, “but it’s a -glorious place, old Gib. I remember in the eighties....” - -Lady Cust, watching from the other end of the table, was much amused by -the _engouement_ her husband had developed, since arriving at Plasencia, -for the society of Jimmy Dundas; it was clearly a case of “better the -bore I know....” - -“Yes, these were great days,” Colonel Dundas was saying; “we’re the -oldest regiment of the line, you know—Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard; that’s -what we call ourselves—Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard!” and he chuckled -proudly. - -And this from a pillar of the Scottish Episcopal Church!... Oh pale -Galilean, _hast_ thou conquered? - - * * * * * - -Then a loving-cup filled with punch began to go the round and they all -drank from it in turn, rising to their feet as they did so, and saying, -“Concha! Rory!” - -When every one had had a sip, Rory, rather pale, got up to return thanks. - -“Ladies and Gentlemen!... (pause) ... I do think it’s _extraordinary_ -kind of you to drink our health in this very nice way. We are most -awfully grateful ... (pause) ... I’m afraid I’m not a Cicero or a Lloyd -George, or anything like that ... (Laughter) ... old Crippin there -will tell you speeches ain’t much in my line....” Then he had a sudden -brilliant idea: “But there’s one thing I should like to ask you all -to do. You see, I’m awfully grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Lane for giving -me Concha, and my uncle has always been most awfully good to me, and -I’d like to ask you all to drink their health ... and if my mother is -anywhere about ... and others ... I know they’ll join in the toast, in -nectar, or whatever they drink up there,” and he ended with an apologetic -little laugh. - -The company was very much touched; Edward Lane blew his nose violently, -and muttered to Jollypot that young Dundas was evidently a very -nice-feeling young fellow. - -The atmosphere having become emotional, the ghosts walked. - -Colonel Dundas had a vision of Rory’s mother—lovely Mab Brabazon—as he -had first seen her, radiant and laughing at the Northern Meeting of -twenty-nine years ago; but then, ever since, he had so often had that -vision: at Church Parade, at polo in India, playing golf in Scotland, -playing Bridge in any of his ten clubs—anywhere, everywhere, he might see -Mab Brabazon. And little had Teresa guessed that as Carlyle read Fenimore -Cooper, so _he_ had read the _French Revolution_—“to distract his mind.” - -Sir Roger and Lady Cust thought of Francis; more than one of Pepa. But -Dick thought of his sallow puritanic sister Joannah, who had been so -much older than himself that their interests had never clashed, and all -his memories of her were of petting and spoiling—“Little Dickie doesn’t -_take_ spoiling, his temper is so sweet,” she used to say—his eyes began -to smart. And Hugh Mallam, too, thought of poor old Joannah Lane, and he -remembered how, in the days when his ambition had been to be a painter, -he used to wonder whether, if offered the certainty of becoming as great -a one as Sir Frederick Leighton, on condition of marrying Joannah, he -would be able to bring himself to do it. - - -3 - -After dinner they went into the garden; some of them sitting on the lawn, -some of them wandering about among the flowers. - -The border was in the summer prime of lilies and peonies and anchusa and -delphiniums; to its right was a great clump of lavender nearly ripe, and -at the stage when it looks like veins of porphyry running through a rock -of jade; a little to its left was a stiff row of hollyhocks. - -“An amazingly distinguished flower, hollyhock!” said Guy, “it always -gives a _cachet_ to its surroundings, so different from sweetpeas, which -look sordid in a dusty station garden, and fragrantly _bourgeois_ beside -the suburban lawn on which Miss Smith is playing tennis in lavender -muslin....” - -“_Guy!_” cried Lady Cust, looking round anxiously at the company, and -laughing apologetically; Guy, however, went on undaunted; “but hollyhock -is like the signature of a great painter, it testifies that any subject -can be turned into art—or, rather, into that domain which lies between -painting and poetry, where damoizelles, dressed in quaintly damasked -brocades, talk of friendship and death and the stars in curious stiff -conceits.” - -“Guy! You _are_ a duffer,” laughed Lady Cust again. - -“Well, here come some of these damoizelles in their quaint brocades—do -you think they are talking about friendship and death and the stars? - -“Do you think they are talking about friendship and death and the stars? -Do you think they are talking about friendship and death and the stars?” -said Hugh Mallam with his jolly laugh, and he nodded towards Concha and -Elfrida Penn and Lettice Moore and Winifred Norton, who, dressed in a -variety of pale colours, were walking arm in arm up the border. - -Sainte-Beuve in a fine passage describes the moment in a journey south -when “en descendant le fleuve, on a passé une de ces lignes par delà -lesquelles le soleil et le ciel sont plus beaux.” - -Such a line—beyond which “the sun and the sky are more beautiful”—cuts -across the range of every one’s vision; and the group of flower-bordered -girls were certainly beyond that line for all who were watching them. -Once again Teresa felt as if she were suddenly seeing the present as the -past; and as long as she lived it would always be as that picture that -she would see Concha’s wedding. - -“_Vera incessu patuit dea_,” murmured Hugh, and then he added, a little -wistfully, “they _do_ look jolly!” - -“You’d look just as jolly far off, in that light, Hugh,” said Dick, who -was sitting blinking at his flowers, like a large, contented tom-cat. - -The younger men who, with the exception of Guy, had been walking up and -down between the hawthorn hedge, smoking cigars and deep in talk—probably -about the War—went and joined the four girls; and after a few moments -of general chatter Arnold flung his arm round Concha’s shoulder and -Teresa could hear him saying: “Come on, Conch,” and they wandered off by -themselves. She was glad; for she knew that Concha had felt acutely the -estrangement from Arnold caused by his jealousy at her engagement. - -Then Rory came and joined the party on the lawn, and sat down on the -grass at the feet of Lady Cust. - -“Well, what about a little Bridge?” said Dick, and he, Hugh, Sir Roger, -and Colonel Dundas, went indoors for a rubber. - -Shortly afterwards Lady Cust and Rory wandered off together in the -direction of the lavender. - -“Well, Rorrocks, so you’re really going to do it?” - -“Yes, Aunt May, I’m in for it this time ... the great adventure!” and he -laughed a little nervously, “Concha ... she ... don’t you think she’s -pretty?” - -“Awfully pretty, Rory, I do really ... a dear thing!” - -They felt that there were many things they wanted to say to each other, -these two; but, apart from reserve and false shame, they would have found -it hard to express these things in words. - -“Well, time does fly! It seems just the other day that I was scurrying up -to Edinburgh for your christening ... and Fran ... Guy was only a year -old.” - -“Yes, ... I can hardly believe it myself,” and again he gave a little -nervous laugh. - -“Well, dear old thing,” and she laid a hand on his arm, “I’m your -godmother, you know, and your mother and I ... I don’t believe we were -ever away from each other till I married ... you’re sure ... it’s going -to be all right, isn’t it?” - -“Yes, Aunt May, it’s going to be all right.... I’m sure,” and again he -laughed; and although he was very pale, his eyes were bright and happy. - - * * * * * - -“Shall we go and walk down the border and look beautiful too?” said Guy -to Teresa. - -“Well, and what about the play?” he asked, when they were out of ear-shot. - -“It’s finished at last ... so I can breathe again. While I was writing -I felt rather like a sort of Thomas the Rhymer, a thrall to ghosts -and fairies; and I got half to hate the whole thing, as one is always -inclined to hate a master.” - -She was trying to be friendly, and thought it would please him if she -told him about such intimate things; but he was not pleased. - -Though he had never written anything long enough to give him at first -hand the feeling she had described, yet he realised it was what certainly -_would_ be felt by a genuine dramatist or novelist; and it was not in -his picture that Teresa should be either—Sophocles may have led his own -choruses, but he did not lead those of Euripides. - -“The play’s finished, and yet all this,” and she waved her arm vaguely in -the direction of the house and garden and all the groups of people, “and -yet all this goes on just the same.” - - -4 - -Next day came the queer dislocated morning—every one either at a loose -end or frantically busy,—the arrival of Dr. Nigel Dundas, Bishop of -Dunfermline, Colonel Dundas’s first cousin, who had travelled all night -from Scotland, to be there to marry Rory; the hurried cold luncheon; -the getting the Custs and people off to the church; then Parker’s and -Teresa’s fingers fumbling with hooks and eyes and arranging the veil. - -When the bride was dressed, and ready to go downstairs, the Doña, who had -not appeared all morning, and was not, of course, going to the church -ceremony, walked into the room, pale and heavy-eyed. - -She held out her arms, “Come to me, my Concha!” she said. - -“Oh, Doña ... if only ... I couldn’t ... it’ll be all right,” Concha -whispered between little sobs, “and anyway, your baby will always love -you ... and ...” - -“The Purissima and all the Saints bless you, my child,” said the Doña in -a stifled voice, and she made the sign of the Cross on her forehead, “but -you mustn’t cry on your wedding day. Come, let me put your veil straight.” - -Teresa, watching this little scene, felt a sudden pang of remorse—why had -she not more control over her imagination? Why had she allowed her mother -to turn, in the play, into such a sinister and shameless figure? - -Then they went down to the hall, where Dick was contemplating in a -pier-glass, with considerable complacency, the reflection of his stout -morning-coated person. - -“Well, it’s quite time we were starting, Concha,” he called out; and -with that amazing ignoring of the emotional conventions by which men are -continually hurting the feelings of women, it was not till he and Concha -were well on their way to church, that he remembered to congratulate her -on her appearance. - -Teresa, Jollypot, and the children, had gone on ahead in the open -car—past hens, past hedges, past motor-bicycles, past cottage gardens; -past fields of light feathery oats, so thickly sown with poppies -that they seemed to flicker together into one fabric; past fields of -barley that had swallowed the wind, which bent and ruffled the ductile -imprisoning substance that it informed; past fields of half-ripe wheat, -around the stalks of which Teresa, who, since she had been writing, had -fallen into an almost exhausting habit of automatic observation, noticed -the light tightly twisting itself in strands of greenish lavender. And -there was a field from which the hay had been carried long enough to have -allowed a fresh crop of poppies to spring up; to see them thus alone and -unhampered gave one such a stab of joyous relief that one could almost -believe the hay to have been but a parasite scum drained away to reveal -this red substratum of beauty. All these things, as they rushed past, -were remarked by Teresa’s weary, active eyes till they had reached the -church and deposited Anna and Jasper with the bridesmaids, waiting in the -porch, and at last they were walking up the aisle and being ushered into -their places by Bob Norton. - -There stood Major Arbuthnot, whispering and giggling with Rory, who was -looking very white and bright-eyed. After all, he was not lower than the -birds—he, too, felt the thrill of mating-time. - -Then the opening bars of the _Voice that Breathed o’er Eden_, and a -stiffening to attention of Major Arbuthnot, and a sudden smile from Rory, -and all eyes turning to the door—Concha was entering on her father’s arm, -her train held up by Jasper. - -Then the Oxford voice of Dr. Nigel Dundas, droning on, droning on, till -it reached the low antiphon with Rory: - - I, James Roderick Brabazon, - _I, James Roderick Brabazon_, - take thee, Maria Concepcion, - _take thee, Maria Concepcion_, - to have and to hold, - _to have and to hold_, - from this day forward, - _from this day forward_, - for better for worse, - _for better for worse_, - for richer for poorer, - _for richer for poorer_, - in sickness and in health, - _in sickness and in health_, - to love and to cherish, - _to love and to cherish_, - till death us do part, - _till death us do part_, - according to God’s holy ordinance; - _according to God’s holy ordinance_; - and thereto I plight thee my troth, - _and thereto I plight thee my troth_. - -Then Concha’s turn and then more prayers; and before long they were all -laughing and chattering and wiping away tears in the vestry; while in the -church the band was playing shamelessly secular tunes, though Mr. Moore -had stipulated that there should be “no vaudeville music.” - -“_Why_ are people crying? A wedding isn’t a _sad_ thing,” said Anna, in a -loud and argumentative voice. - - * * * * * - -Then down the aisle and down the path between a double hedge of Girl -Guides, and whirling back to the Plasencia garden and masses and masses -of people. - -Teresa was immediately sucked into a vortex of activities—elbowing her -way through the crowd with a cup of tea for one old lady and an ice for -another; steering a third to one of the tents, to choose for herself -what she wanted; making suitable rejoinders to such questions and -exclamations as: “How charming dear Concha looks, I really think she’s -the prettiest bride I’ve ever seen.” “Do tell me what the red ribbon is -that Captain Dundas is wearing—the one that isn’t the M.C.? Some one said -they thought it was a Belgian order.” “Tell me dear; it was the Scottish -Church Service, wasn’t it? I mean, the Scotch Church that’s like _ours_? -I did so like it ... so much more ... well, _delicate_ than ours.” “Oh, -just look at those masses of white butterflies on the lavender! What a -splendid crop you’ll have! Do you send it up to London?” - -Then, as in a nightmare, she heard Anna proclaiming proudly that she had -eaten eight ices, and Jasper ten; well, it was too late now to take any -measures. - -Also, she had time to be amused at noticing that Mrs. Moore had managed -to get introduced to Lady Cust, and was talking to her eagerly. - -Later on she heard Lettice Moore saying to another bridesmaid, “Poor old -Eben! He was frightfully cut up when he heard about the engagement,” -and, in the foolish way one has of moving indifferently among the -world’s great tragedies—earthquakes, famines, wars—and suddenly feeling -a tightening of the throat, and a smarting of the eyes as one realises -that at that moment a bullfinch is probably dying in China, Teresa -suddenly felt a wave of pity and tenderness sweep over her for Eben, -sitting in his cabin (did senior “snotties” have a cabin to themselves? -Well, it didn’t really matter), so poorly furnished in comparison with -the gramophones and silver photograph frames, and gorgeous cushions of -his mates, his arms, with the red hands whose fingers had never recovered -their shape from the chilblains of the Baltic, dangling limply down at -either side of him, and perhaps tears in his round china-blue eyes. - -Then at last Concha and Rory were running and ducking and laughing under -a shower of rice, and rose leaves. They looked very young and frail, both -of them, blown out into the world, where God knew what awaited them. - -“They are like Paulo and Francesca—two leaves clinging together, blown by -the wind,” said Jollypot dreamily to Teresa. - - -5 - -We have already likened a wedding to a fall of snow; and as rapidly as a -fall of snow it melts, disclosing underneath it just such a dingy world. - -One by one the motley company drifted off in trains, and motors, their -exit producing on Teresa the same impression that she always got from -the end of _Twelfth Night_—that of a troupe of fairy mimes, laden with -their tiffany, their pasteboard yew hedges, their stucco peacocks, slowly -sailing away in a cloud out of sight, while the clown whom they have -forgotten, sits down here on the earth singing _the rain it raineth -every day_. - -But, in spite of a dismantled drawing-room, a billiard-table covered with -presents, a trampled lawn and a furious Parker and Rudge, life quickly -re-adjusted itself. - -The next day but one there was a rose show in the county town, and Rudge -went to see it. - -After dinner, Dick had him summoned to the drawing-room to discuss the -roses with himself and the Doña. - -His leathery cheeks were flushed, his hard eyes shone: “Oh ... it was -grand, ma’am. I was saying to Mrs. Rudge, ‘Well, I said, one doesn’t -often see a sight like that!’ I said. There was a new white rose, sir, -well, I’ve never seen anything to beat it....” - -“And what about the _Daily Clarion_ rose?” - -“Well, sir, a very fine rose, certainly, but I’m not sure if it would do -with us ... but that white rose, sir, I said to Mrs. Rudge, ‘you could -almost say it was like the moon,’ I said.” - - * * * * * - -And what was Time but a gigantic rose, shedding, one by one, its petals? -And then Jollypot gathered them up and made them into _pot-pourri_; but -still the petals went on falling, silently, ceaselessly. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - - -1 - -That year there was a marvellous harvest, and by the end of July the -sun had burned the wheat into the very quintessence of gold, and every -evening for a few moments the reflection of its dying rays transfigured -it into a vision, so glorious, so radiant, that Dick, looking up from his -fish, would exclaim to the dinner-table, “Good God! Look at the wheat!” - -Thus must the memory of the corn of Cana, sown with symbols, heavy with -memories and legends, radiant with gleams caught from the Golden City in -the skies, have appeared to St. John dying in the desert. - -Teresa, having, during her walks in the view, noticed a field of -wheat from which a segment had already been cut, so that, with the -foil of the flat earth beside it, she was able to see the whole depth -of the crop, carried away an impression of the greater thickness of -wheat-fields as compared to those containing the other crops; and this -impression—strengthened by the stronger colouring of the wheat, for to -the memory quality is often indistinguishable from quantity—lingering -with her after she had got back to Plasencia, whence the view always -appeared _pintado_, a picture, gave her the delusion of appreciating -the actual _paint_, not merely as a medium of representation, but as a -beautiful substance in itself; as one appreciates it in a Monet or a -Monticelli. - -And all the time, silently, imperceptibly, like the processes of nature, -the work of harvest was transforming the picture, till by the end of -the first week in August many of the planes of unbroken colour had been -dotted into shocks or garnered into ricks. The only visible agent of this -transformation was an occasional desultory wain with a green tarpaulin -tilt, meandering through the silent fields. Its progress through, and -its relation to, or, rather, its lack of relation to, the motionless -view gave Teresa an almost eerie sense of incongruity, and made her -think of a vase of crimson roses she had sat gazing at one night in the -drawing-room. The light of the lamp behind it had changed the substance -of the roses into something so translucent that they seemed to be made of -a fluid or of light. A tiny insect was creeping in and out among their -petals, and as she watched it she had a sense of being mentally out of -gear in that she could see simultaneously phenomena belonging to such -different planes of consciousness as these static phantom flames and -that restless creature of the earth—they themselves, at any rate, could -neither feel or see each other. - -Then they all went away—the Doña and Dick to join Hugh Mallam at Harlech, -Jollypot to a sister in Devonshire, and Teresa to Cambridge to stay with -Harry Sinclair. - -The year began to pay the penalty of its magnificence; for “violent -fires soon burn out themselves”; and Teresa, walking down the Backs, or -punting up to Byron’s pool, or bicycling among the lovely Cambridgeshire -villages, saw everywhere signs of the approach of autumn in reddening -leaves and reddening fruits, and there kept running in her head lines -from a poem of Herrick’s on _Lovers How They Come and Part_. - - They tread on clouds, and though they sometimes fall, - They fall like dew, and make no noise at all. - So silently they one to th’other come - As colours steale into the Pear or Plum. - -While she was there she met Haines (the man who ran the pastoral -players). He had heard of her play from Guy, and was so importunate in -his requests to be allowed to read it that she finally gave it to him. - -Guy had been right—the need to publish or produce was biological: useless -to fight against. - -Haines liked it, and wanted to set his company working at it at once. - -As one hypnotised, she agreed to all of his suggestions: “Cust says you -have a lawn with a view which would make an excellent natural background -... I believe it would be the very thing. It’s a piece that needs very -few properties—some cardboard trees for the orchard, a few bottles and -phials for Trotaconventos’s house, and an altar to give the effect of a -chapel in the last scene ... yes, it should be very nice on your lawn, I -think folk will like it.” - -Did he say _folk_? But, of course, it would obviously be a favourite word -of his. - - * * * * * - -So, _Folk_ were to take a hand—_Folk_ were to spring up like mushrooms on -the lawn of Plasencia, and embody her dreams! - -A little shiver went down her spine. - -“I am a fool, I am a fool, I am a fool,” she muttered. - - -2 - -They all came back to Plasencia at the beginning of September. - -The Doña received the plan of the play’s being acted on her lawn with -indulgent indifference; ever since they had been quite little her -children had periodically organised dramatic performances. “Mrs. Moore -can bring her Women’s Institute to watch it, and that should leave me in -peace for this year, at any rate. I suppose we’d better have the county -too, though we _did_ give them cakes and ices enough at Concha’s wedding -to last them their lifetime. What is this play of yours about, Teresa?” - -“Oh ... old Seville,” she answered nervously, “a nunnery ... and ... and -... there’s a knight ... and there’s an old sort of ... sort of witch.” - -“Aha! an old gipsy. And does she give the girls love potions?” And the -Doña, her head a little on one side, contemplated her, idly quizzical. - -“Yes, I daresay she does,” and Teresa gave a nervous laugh, “it’s an -_auto sacramentál_,” she added. - -The Doña looked interested: “An _auto sacramentál_? That’s what they used -to play in the old days in the Seville streets at Corpus Christi. Your -great-grandmother de La Torre saw one of the last they ever did,” then -she began to chuckle, “an _auto sacramentál_ on an English lawn! Poor -Mrs. Moore and her Women’s Institute! Still, it will be very good for -them, I’m sure.” - - * * * * * - -Would she guess? She was horribly intelligent; but not literary, so there -was hope—and yet ... that affective sensitiveness that, having taken the -place for centuries of education and intellection, has developed in the -women of Spain into what is almost a sixth sense.... - -Well, if she did guess it would be only what she knew already, and if she -chose to draw false conclusions—let her! - -But would she recognise herself? The mere possibility of this made Teresa -blush crimson. But it was not her fault; she had not meant to draw her -like that—it had grown on her hands. - -And then she thought no more about it, but wandered through the garden -and ripening orchard, muttering absently: - - So silently they one to th’other come, - As colours steale into the Pear or Plum. - - -3 - -After what seemed an interminable correspondence with Haines, it was -settled that he should bring his company to act the play at the end of -September. Teresa had tried hard to make the date an earlier or a later -one; but it was not to be ... and perhaps ... who could tell? - -Mrs. Moore was delighted that her Institute was to see a play about old -Spain, and was sure that it would be most educative. - -The idea of its being played before Mrs. Moore and a Women’s Institute -amused Teresa; after all it was none of her doing, and she liked watching -life when it was left free to arrange its own humorous combinations. - -Concha and Rory, Arnold, Harry Sinclair, and Guy, all came to stay at -Plasencia to see it; and two days before the performance a telegram came -from David, asking if they could put him up for a few nights. - -The Doña frowned as she read it, and Guy looked at Teresa; but Concha and -Rory begged that room might be made for him, “It will be his last beano, -poor creature,” they said. - -Well, if it was to be, it was to be. Once one ceases to strain against -the chain of events, the peace of numbness creeps over one’s weary limbs, -and anyway ... perhaps.... - - * * * * * - -The day of the performance arrived; it was to begin at two o’clock. - -All morning Teresa was busy with preparations; she could not help being -amused by the tremendous importance that everything concerning it had -for Haines—it was like Parker, who seemed to think the world should stop -moving during the fitting-on in the sewing-room of a new blouse. - -No one had time to go in the car to meet David; and they had already -begun luncheon when he arrived. All the actors were there, so it was -a large party, and he sat down on the Doña’s left hand, far away from -Teresa. She noticed that he ate practically nothing. He looked much -stronger than in the spring, and his expression was almost buoyant. - -Before the audience arrived, and when the actors were dressing in the two -tents pitched on the lawn, they got a few words together. - -“I’ve come,” he said, smiling. - -“Yes ... you’ve come,” she answered. - -“So you’ve been writing a play—‘a chiel amang us takin’ notes’!” and he -smiled down on her. - -Then Mrs. Moore came bustling across the lawn, shepherding her Institute, -a score of working women in their Sunday finery, many of them carrying -babies. - -“How do you do, Teresa, what a glorious day! I saw dear Concha in church -on Sunday; looking so bonny. It must be delightful having her back again. -Well, this is a great surprise; we didn’t know you were an author; did -we, Mrs. Bolton? We didn’t know Miss Lane wrote; did we? Well, we’re all -very much looking forward to it; aren’t we, Mrs. Hedges? I don’t expect -you’ve seen many plays before.” - -“I saw _East Lynne_ when I was in service in Bedford,” said one woman -proudly. - -“I’ve seen that on the pictures,” said another. - -Then the “gentry” began to arrive: “_What_ a day for your play!” “Oh, -what a _sight_ your Michaelmas daisies are! It really is a perfect -setting for a pastoral play,” “Are there to be any country dances?” “Ah! -_you_ have that single rose too ... it certainly is very decorative, but -I thought Mr. Lane said ... ah! there he is, in flannels, wise man!” “Ah, -there’s Mistress Concha, looking about sixteen, dear thing!—” “I do think -it’s a splendid idea having the Institute women—it’s so good for them, -this sort of thing.” - -Then fantastic figures began to dart in and out of the two tents: a -knight in pasteboard armour, a red cross painted on his shield, a friar -with glimpses of scarlet hose under his habit—all of them “holy people -of God,” all of them dead hundreds of years ago ... _Folk_, unmistakably -_Folk_. - -Soon the audience was seated; the chattering ceased, and the play began. - -This was the play: - - - - -THE KEY - -AN AUTO SACRAMENTÁL - - -_Scene: Seville. Time: The Reign of Pedro the Cruel._ - - -DRAMATIS PERSONÆ - - SISTER PILAR ⎞_Nuns of the Convent of San Miguel._ - SISTER ASSUMCION ⎠ - - Four other Nuns of the Convent of San Miguel. - - TROTACONVENTOS _a Procuress._ - - DON MANUEL DE LARA _a Knight._ - - DENNYS _a French “Trovar.”_ - - JAIME RODRIGUEZ _Confessor to the Nuns of San Miguel._ - - DON SALOMON _a Jewish Doctor._ - - PEPITA ⎞_Two Children._ - JUANITO ⎠ - - SANCHO ⎞ - DOMINGO ⎟_Alguaciles._ - PEDRO ⎠ - - GHOST OF DON JUAN TENORIO. - - GHOST OF SISTER ISABEL. - - ZULEICA _a Moorish Slave._ - - - - -ACT I - - -SCENE I - - _The court of the Convent of San Miguel: its floor is diapered - with brightly-coloured tiles; in its centre is a fountain, - round which are set painted pots of sweet basil, myrtle, etc., - its walls are decorated with arabesques and mottoes in Arabic - characters; against one wall is a little shrine containing - a wooden virgin. SISTER ASSUMCION is reading aloud from - “Amadis de Gaul” to four nuns who are sitting round on rugs - embroidering. A Moorish slave is keeping the flies from them - with a large fan._ - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_reads_): The hand then drew her in, and she was as -joyful as though the whole world had been given her, not so much for the -prize of beauty, which had been won, as that she had thus proved herself -the worthy mate of Amadis, having, like him, entered the forbidden -chamber, and deprived all others of the hope of that glory. - -(_Lays down the book_): Well, and so that is the end of the fair Lady -Oriana. - -_First Nun_ (_with a giggle_): Has any one yet put this reading of Amadis -into their confession? - -_Sister Assumcion_: More fool they then if they have; we may confess it -now that we have reached the colophon. Better absolution for a sheep than -a lamb. (_They laugh_). - -_Second Nun_: Ah, well, ’tis but a venial sin, and when one thinks.... - -_Third Nun_: Ay, praise be to heaven for the humours that swell old -abbesses’ legs and make them keep a-bed! - -_First Nun_: Truly, since she took to her bed, there have been fine -doings in this house—it was but yesterday that we were reckoning that it -must be close on five months since the Prioress has kept frater. - -_Third Nun_: And Zuleica there, sent all through Lent to the _Morería_[1] -or the Jews’ butcher for red meat ... and she was swearing it was all for -her ape Gerinaldo! - -_First Nun_: Yes, and the other night I could have sworn I heard the -strains of a Moorish zither coming from her room and the tapping heels of -a _juglaresa_. - -_Fourth Nun_ (_with a sigh_): This house has never been the same since -the sad fall of Sister Isabel. - -_First Nun_: Ay, that must have been a rare time! Two brats, I think? - -_Second Nun_: And they say her lying in was in the house of -Trotaconventos. - -_Third Nun_: Ah, well, as the common folk, and (_with rather a spiteful -smile_) our dear Sister Assumcion would say: Who sleeps with dogs rises -with fleas—and if we sin venially, why, the only wonder is that ’tis not -mortally. - -_Second Nun_: Be that as it may, if rumours reach the ears of the -Archbishop there’ll be a rare shower of penances at the next visitation. -Why, the house will echo for weeks to the mournful strains of _Placebo_ -and _Dirige_, and there will be few of us, I fear, who will not forfeit -our black veils for a season. - -_Fourth Nun_: There is one will keep her black veil for the honour of the -house. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_scornfully_): Aye, winds strong enough to level the -Giralda could not blow off the black veil of Sister Pilar. - -_Third Nun_: And yet ... she is a Guzman, and the streets are bloody from -their swords; they are a wild crew. - -_Fourth Nun_: Yes, but a holy one—St. Dominic was a Guzman. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_mockingly_): St. Martin! To the rescue of your -little bird!... as the common folk and (_with an ironical bow to the -third nun_) Sister Assumcion would say. - -_First Nun_: What’s that? - -_Sister Assumcion_: Why, it is but a little story that I sometimes think -of when I look at Sister Pilar. - -_Second Nun_: Let’s hear the story. - -_Sister Assumcion_: Well, they say that one hot day a little martin -perched on the ground under a tree, and, spreading out his wings -and ruffling his little feathers, as proud as any canon’s lady at a -procession in Holy Week, he piped out: Were the sky to fall I could hold -it up on my wings! And at that very moment a leaf from the tree dropped -on to his head, and so scared the poor little bird that he was all of a -tremble, and he spread his wings and away he flew, crying: St. Martin! To -the rescue of your little bird! And that is what we say in the country -when folks carry their heads higher than their neighbours. (_They laugh._) - - (_Pause._) - -_Second Nun_: And yet has she kindly motions. Do you remember when the -little novice Ines was crying her eyes out because she had not the -wherewithal to buy her habit, and thought to die with shame in that she -would need have to make her profession by pittances? Well, and what must -Sister Pilar do but go to the friend of Ines, little Maria Desquivel, -whose father, they say, is one of the richest merchants in Seville, -feigning that for the good of her soul she would fain consecrate a purse -of money, and some sundries bequeathed her by an aunt, to the profession -of two novices, and said that she would take it very kind if Maria and -Ines would be these two. And so little Ines was furnished out with habit, -and feather-bed, and quilt all powdered with stags’ heads and roses, and -a coffer of painted leather, and a dozen spoons, and a Dominican friar -to preach the sermon at her profession, without expending one blush of -shame; in that she shared the debt with her rich friend. And then, too, -with children she is wonderfully tender. - -_Fourth Nun_ (_with a little shiver_): But that cold gray eye like glass! -I verily believe her thoughts are all ... for the last things. - - _SISTER ASSUMCION gives a little snort. Silence. SISTER - PILAR comes out of the convent behind the group of nuns, and - approaches them unobserved._ - -_Fourth Nun_ (_musing_): And yet, that book, by a monk long dead, about -the miracles of Our Lady ... it shows her wondrous lenient to sin, let -but the sinners be loud enough in her praise ... there was the thief she -saved from the gallows because he had said so many Aves. - -_Sister Pilar_: But _he_ was not in religion. - - (_They all give starts of surprise._) - -_Second Nun_: Jesus! How you startled me! - -_Third Nun_: I verily believe you carry a heliotrope and walk invisible. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_a note of nervousness perceptible through the -insolence of her voice_): And are those in religion to have, forsooth, a -smaller share in the spiritual treasure of the Church than thieves? - - _SISTER PILAR sits down without answering._ - -_Second Nun_ (_smiling_): Well? - -_Sister Pilar_: They say there was once a giant, so strong that he could -have lifted the Sierra Morena and placed them on the Pyrenees, but one -day he happened on a little stone no bigger than my nail, but so firmly -was it embedded in the ground that all his mighty strength availed him -nothing to make it budge an inch. - -_Sister Assumcion_: And that little stone is the sin of a religious? - -_Sister Pilar_ (_with a shrug_): Give it whatever meaning tallies with -your humour. (_She opens a book and begins to read it._) - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_yawning_): I’m hungry. Shall I send Zuleica to beg -some marzipan from the Cellaress, or shall I possess my soul and belly in -patience until dinner-time? - -_First Nun_ (_jocosely_): For shame! Gluttony is one of the deadly sins, -is it not, Sister Pilar? - - _SISTER PILAR keeps her eyes fixed on her book without - answering. JAIME RODRIGUEZ enters by door to left. Flutter - among nuns._ - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Christ and His Mother be with you, my daughters. -(_Sits down and mops his brow._) ’Tis wondrous cool and pleasant in your -court. (_He gives a shy glance at SISTER PILAR, but she continues to keep -her eyes on her book. Turns to fourth nun._) Well, daughter, and what of -the cope you promised me? - -_Second Nun_ (_holding up her embroidery_): See! It wants but three more -roses and one swan. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_with another glance in the direction of_ SISTER -PILAR): And do you know of what the swan is the figure? In that, flying -from man, it makes its dwelling in wild, solitary haunts, St. Gregory of -Nazianus holds that it figures the anchorite, and truly.... - -_Sister Pilar_ (_suddenly looking up, and smiling a little_): But what -of its love of the lyre and all secular songs, by which it is wont to be -lured to its destruction from its most secret glens? I have read that -this same failing has led some learned doctors to look upon it as a -figure of the soul of man, drawn hither and thither by the love of vain -things. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_up to now he has spoken in a mincing, self-conscious -voice, but from this point on his voice is shrill and excited_): Yes, -yes, but that can also be interpreted as the love of godly men for -sermons and edification and grave seemly discourse on the beautitudes of -eternal life, and the holy deeds of men and women long since departed.... - -_Sister Assumcion_: The love, in short, of such discourse as yours, -father? (_She tries in vain to catch SISTER PILAR’S eye and wink at her._) - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_pouting like a cross child_, sotto voce): Honey is -not for the mouth of the ass. - -_Sister Assumcion_: Well, when you joined us, we were in the midst of -just such a discourse. ’Twas touching the sin of a religious, which -Sister Pilar was likening to a stone of small dimensions, but so heavy -that a mighty giant could not move it. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_turning eagerly to SISTER PILAR_): Where did you read -that _exemplum_, daughter? I have not come upon it. - -_Sister Pilar_: Sister Assumcion has drawn her own meaning from a little -foolish tale. She must surely be fresh from pondering the Fathers that -she is so quick to find spiritual significations. Is that volume lying by -you (_pointing to “Amadis”_) one of the works of the Fathers, sister? - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_staring at her insolently_): No, Sister, it is not. - - _The other nuns titter._ - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Well, ’tis doubtless true that a little sin shows -blacker on the soul of a religious than a great sin on a layman’s -soul ... but when it comes to the weighing in the ghostly scales, a -religious has very heavy things to throw into the balance—Aves and -Paters, though made of nought but air, are heavy things. Then, there -is the nourishment of Christ’s body every day, making our souls wax -fat, and—and—(_impatiently_) oh, all the benefits of a religious weigh -heavily. The religious, like a peasant, has a treasure hid ’neath his -bed that will for ever keep the wolf from the door. (_Looks round to see -if his conceit is appreciated._) In Bestiaries, the wolf, you know, is a -figure of the devil. - - _Enter from behind TROTACONVENTOS, carrying a pedlar’s pack. - Throughout the play she is dressed in scarlet._ - -_Trotaconventos_ (_in unctuous, mocking voice_): Six hens to one cock! -I verily believe that was the sight that made Adam weary in Eden. Holy -hens and reverend cock, I bid you good morrow. (_She catches SISTER -ASSUMCION’S eye and gives a little nod._) - -_The Nuns in chorus_: Why, ’tis our good friend Trotaconventos! - -_First Nun_: For shame! You have sorely neglected San Miguel these last -days. What news in the town? - -_Third Nun_: I hear the Ponces gave a tournament and bull-fight to -celebrate a daughter’s wedding, and that the bridegroom was gored by the -bull and the leeches despair of his recovery—is’t true? - -_Second Nun_: What is the latest Moorish song? - -_First Nun_: Have you been of late to the Alcazar? You promised to note -for me if Doña Maria wore her gown cut square or in a peak? - -_Trotaconventos_ (_covering her ears with her hands_): Good ladies, -you’ll have me deaf. And do you not think shame to ask about such worldly -matters before your confessor, there ... and before Sister Pilar? -(_turning to SISTER PILAR_). Well, lady, and have the wings sprouted yet? -But bear in mind the proverb that says, the ant grew wings to its hurt; -and why? Because it took to flying and fell a prey to the birds. - - _The nuns exchange glances and giggle. SISTER PILAR looks at - her with cold disgust._ - -_Sister Pilar_: Truly, you are as well stocked with proverbs and fables -as our sister Assumcion. _You_, doubtless, collect them at fairs and -peasants’ weddings, but ... (_she breaks off suddenly, bites her lip, -colours, and takes up her book_). - -_Trotaconventos_: Ah, well, wisdom can walk in a homespun jerkin as -well as in the purple of King Solomon, eh, Don priest? And as to -Sister Assumcion, what if her speech be freckled with a few wholesome, -sun-ripened proverbs? They will not show on her pretty face when the -nuns of Seville meet the nuns of Toledo in the contest of beauty, eh, -my pretty? (_SISTER ASSUMCION laughs and tosses her head._) But the -reverend chaplain is looking sourly! It is rare for Trotaconventos to -meet with sour looks from the cloth. Why, there is not a canon’s house -in _los Abades_ that does not sweetly stink of my perfumes: storax, -benjamin, gum, amber, civet, musk, mosqueta. For do they not say that -holiness and sweet odours are the same? It was Don Miguel de Caceres—that -stout, well-liking canon, God rest his soul, who lived in the house the -choir-master has now—and I used to keep his old shaven face as soft for -him as a ripe fig, and I saw to it that he could drink his pig-skin a day -without souring his breath; well, he used to call me ‘the panther’ of -Seville; for it seems the panther is as many-hued as the peacock, and the -other beasts follow it to their destruction because of the sweet odours -it exudes. And there were words from Holy Writ he would quote about -me—_in odorcur_ or words to that effect. Nor were the other branches.... - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_who had been fidgeting with impatience at -TROTACONVENTOS’S verbosity, as usual shrilly and excitedly_): Doubtless -the words quoted by the late canon were, _in odore unguentorum tuorum -curremus_—in the track of thy perfumes shall we run. They come in the -Song of Songs, the holy _redondilla_ wherewith Christ Jesus serenades -Holy Church, and truly.... - -_Trotaconventos_ (_calmly ironical_): Truly, Don Jaime, you are a -learned clerk. But as I was saying, it is not only for my perfumes -that they seek me in _los Abades_. Don Canon is wont to have a large -paunch, and Trotaconventos was not always as stout as she is now ... -there were doors through which I could glide, while Don Canon’s bulk, -for all his puffing and squeezing, must stand outside in the street. So -in would go Trotaconventos, as easily as though it were your convent, -ladies, her wallet stuffed with _redondillas_ and _coplas_, and all the -other learned ballads wherein clerks are wont to rhyme their sighs and -tears and winks and leers, and thrown in with these were toys of my own -devising—tiring-pins of silver-gilt, barred belts, slashed shoes, kirtles -laced with silk, lotions against freckles and warts and women’s colics.... - - _The nuns, except SISTER PILAR, who is apparently absorbed in - her reading, are drinking in every word with evident amusement - and delight, JAIME RODRIGUEZ grows every moment more impatient - and bored._ - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Er—er—the Roman dame, Cleopatra, the leman of Mark -Antony, was also learned in such matters; she wrote a book on freckles -and their cure and.... - -_Trotaconventos_: I do not doubt it, Don Jaime. Well, in would go -Trotaconventos, and round her would flock the pretty little uncoiffed -maids, like the doves in the Cathedral garden when one has crumbs in -one’s wallet. And I would feed them with marzipan and deck them out with -my trinkets, and then they would sigh and say it was poor cheer going -always with eyes cast on the ground and dressed as soberly as a nun -(_she winks at the Nuns_) when they had chest upon chest packed as close -as pears in a basket with scarlet clothes from Bruges and Malines, and -gowns of Segovian cloth and Persian samite, and bandequins from Bagdad, -all stiff with gold and pearls and broidered stories, rich as the shroud -of St. Ferdinand or the banners of the King of Granada, lying there to -fatten the moths till their parents should get them a husband. And I -would say, ‘Well, when the dog put on velvet breeches he was as good as -his master. There’s none to see but old Trotaconventos, and _she_ won’t -blab. I’d like to see how this becomes you, and this ... and this.’ And I -would have them decked out as gay and fine as a fairy, and they strutting -before the mirror and laughing and blushing and taking heart of grace. -Then my hand would go up their petticoats, and they would scream, ‘Ai! -ai! Trotaconventos, you are tickling me!’ and laugh like a child of -seven. And I would say, ‘Ah, my sweeting, there is one could tickle you -better than me.’ And so I would begin Don Canon’s suit. Ay, and I would -keep him posted in her doings, telling him at what procession she would -be at, or in what church she would hear ‘cock’s mass.’ Or, if it was to a -pretty widow his fancy roved, it was I that could tell him which days she -was due at the church-yard to pray at her husband’s grave ... aye, as the -proverb says, when the broom sprouts the ass is born to eat it. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_with a malicious glance at JAIME RODRIGUEZ_): But -another proverb says: Honey is not for the mouth of the ass. - -_Trotaconventos_ (_with a wink_): And yet another says: Honey lies hid -in rocks; and it was not only to the houses of lords and merchants that -I went on Don Canon’s business. How did I win my name of Trotaconventos? -It was not given me by my gossips at the font. I was not taught in my -catechism that on the seventh day God created man and woman, and on the -eighth day He created monks and nuns ... were you so taught, Sister Pilar? - - _JAIME RODRIGUEZ, with a petulant sigh, gets up and goes and - examines the arabesques on one of the walls._ - -_Sister Pilar_ (_looking up from her book, her eye sparkling and her -cheek flushing_): As to that ... I have seen a painted Bible wherein the -Serpent of Eden is depicted with a wicked old woman’s face. - - _JAIME RODRIGUEZ turns round with a shrill cackle._ - -_Trotaconventos_ (_chuckling_): A good, honest blow, Sister Pilar! But as -the proverb says, the abbot dines off his singing, and of its own accord -the pot does not fill itself with stew. Howbeit, Sister Pilar, who laughs -last laughs on the right side of his mouth. Well, ladies, shall we to the -parlour? A ship from Tunis has lately come in, and one from Alexandria, -and one from Genoa, and they tell me I was born under Liber with the -moon in the ascendant, and that draws me ever to the water’s edge, and -sailors have merry kind hearts and bring me toys, and, it may be, there -will be that among them that will take your fancy. - -_First Nun_: We have been burning to know what was hid in your pack -to-day. - -_Third and Second Nun_: To the parlour! To the parlour! - - _All except SISTER PILAR and JAIME RODRIGUEZ walk towards the - convent. SISTER PILAR goes on reading. JAIME RODRIGUEZ comes up - to her and timidly sits down beside her. Silence._ - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_in a constrained voice_): I am to read mass to the -pilgrims before they start for Guadalupe. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_absently_): I should like to go on pilgrimage. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Perhaps ... if ... why do you never go then? - -_Sister Pilar_ (_smiling a little sadly_): Because I want to keep my -own dream of a pilgrimage—nothing but mountains and rivers and seas and -visions and hymns to Our Lady. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: I fear there are other things as well: fleas and dust, -and tumblers and singers, and unseemly talk. - -_Sister Pilar_: Hence I’d liefer go on pilgrimage by the road of my own -dreams. (_Passionately_) Oh, these other things, small and pullulating -and fertile, and all of them the spawn of sin! One cannot be rid of them. -Why, even in the Books of Hours, round the grave Latin psalms the monks -must needs draw garlands and butterflies and hawks and hounds; and we -nuns powder our handiwork—the copes and vestments for the mass—not with -such meet signs as crosses and emmies, but with swans and true-love knots -and birds and butterflies ... (_she breaks off, half laughing_). I would -have things plain and grave. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_impatiently_): Yes, yes, but you are forgetting -that Nature is the mirror in which is reflected the thoughts of God; -hence, to the discerning eye, there is nothing mean and trivial, but -everything, everything, is a page in the great book of the Passion and -the Redemption. For him who has learned to read that book, the Martyrs -bleed in roses and in amethysts, the Confessors keep their council in -violets, and in lilies the Virgins are spotless—not a spray of eglantine, -not a little ant, but is a character in the book of Nature. Why, without -first reading it, the holy fathers could not crack a little nut; it -is the figure of Christ, said Adam of Saint-Victor—its green husk is -His humanity, its shell the wood of the Cross, its kernel the heavenly -nourishment of the Host. Nay, daughter, I tell you.... - -_Sister Pilar_: Yes, yes, but do you verily believe the nun with her -needle, the clerk with his brush, wots anything of these hidden matters? -Nay, it is nought but vanity. Oh! these multitudinous seeds of vanity -that lie broadcast in every soul, in every mote of sunshine, in every -acre of the earth! There is no soul built of a substance so closely knit -but that it has crannies wherein these seeds find lodging; and, ere you -can say a pater, lo! they are bourgeoning! ’Tis like some church that -stands four-square to the winds and sun so long as folk flock there to -pray; then comes a rumour that the Moors are near, and the folks leave -their homes and fly; and then, some day, they may return, and they -will find the stout walls of their church all starred with jessamine, -intagliated with ivy, that eat and eat until it crumbles to the ground. -So many _little_ things ... everywhere! And our thoughts ... say it be -the Passion of Our Lord we choose for contemplation; at first, all is -well, the tears flow, ’tis almost as if we smelled the sweat and dust of -the road to Calvary ... and then, after a little space, we stare around -bewildered, and know that our minds have broken into scores of little -bright thoughts, like the margins of the Hours, and then ... - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Yes, daughter, but I tell you you should obtain the -key to the Creation; read St. Ambrose’s _Hexæmeron_, and thus school -your mind by figures for the naked types of Heaven; there every house -will be a church, its hearth an altar on which, no longer hid under the -species of bread and wine, Jesus Christ will be for ever enthroned. And -its roof will be supported not by pillars carved into the semblance of -the Patriarchs and Apostles, but by the Patriarchs ... oh, yes, and the -housewife’s store of linen will all be corporals, and her plate ... you -are smiling! - -_Sister Pilar_: How happy you must have been playing with your toys -when you were a child! I can see you with an old wine-keg for an altar, -a Moor’s skull for a chalice, and a mule’s discarded shoe for a pyx, -chanting meaningless words, and rating the other children if their wits -wandered ... but ... you are angry? - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_rising in high dudgeon_): Aye, ever mocking! Methinks -... I cannot call to mind ever reading that holy women of old mocked -their confessors. - - _He walks across the court to the door at the side. SISTER - PILAR sits on for some minutes in a reverie, then rises, and - goes and tends the plants round the fountain, so that she is - not visible to any one entering the court from the convent. - Enter from the convent TROTACONVENTOS and SISTER ASSUMCION._ - -_Trotaconventos_: As to hell-fire, my dear, you’ll meet with many a -procuress and bawd in Paradise, for we have a mighty advocate in St. Mary -Magdalene, who was of our craft. And as to the holy life, why, when your -hams begin to wither and your breasts to sag, then cast up your eyes -and draw as long an upper lip as a prioress at a bishop’s visitation. A -sinful youth and a holy old age—thus do we both enjoy the earth and win -to Paradise hereafter. Well, my sweeting, all is in train—I’d eat some -honey, it softens the voice; and repeat the _in Temerate_ and the _De -Profundis_, for old wives say they are wonderful lucky prayers in all -such business, and ... well, I think that is all. Be down at the orchard -wall at nine o’clock to-night, and trust the rest to what the Moors call -the ‘great procuress’—Night. - - _Exit TROTACONVENTOS. SISTER PILAR appears from behind the - fountain. She and SISTER ASSUMCION stare at each other in - silence for a few seconds, SISTER PILAR coldly, SISTER - ASSUMCION defiantly._ - - -SCENE II - - _Scene the same. Time: Afternoon of the same day. SISTER - PILAR is hearing JUANITO’S and PEPITA’S lessons._ - -_Pepita_: Says St. John the Evangelist: - - In Jesus Christ I do believe, - In guise of bread we Him perceive, - The Father’s side he ne’er does leave Son Eternal. - -_Juanito_: Says St. Philip: - - Down into Hell he did descend - The gates of which.... - -SISTER PILAR: No, no, Juanito. That does not come for a long time. - -_Pepita_: I remember; let _me_ say. - - Says St. James: - The Holy Ghost did Him conceive—— - -_Juanito_: ’Tis my part she is saying—’tis my part. - - Says St. James ... oh, I can’t remember! - -May we go on to the Seven Deadly Sins? I like them much the best. - - Beware of Lust—King David once.... - -_Sister Pilar_: Juanito, dear, you must not look upon this exercise as -a game. It is the doctrine of Holy Mother Church. It is your pilgrim’s -staff and not a light matter. Let us begin again. - -_Juanita_: Oh, I am so weary! The sun’s so hot. My head seems as if -to-day it could not hold Creeds and such matters. Prithee, Sister Pilar, -will you not read to us? - -_Pepita_: Yes! Yes! From the Chronicle of Saint Ferdinand. - -_Sister Pilar_: Oh, children, you have been at your tasks scarce quarter -of an hour. - -_Children_: Prithee, dear Sister Pilar! We were both bled this morning. - -_Sister Pilar_: I fear I am a fond and foolish master. Well, so be it. -(_She opens a large folio._) Let me see.... - -_Pepita_: ’Twas at the fall of Seville that you left off yesterday. - -_Juanito_: Yes, and that old Moor had yielded up the keys. - -_Sister Pilar_: This is the place. “Now one of the keys was of so pure -a silver that it seemed to be white, and in places it was gilded, and -it was of a very notable and exquisite workmanship. In length it was -the third of a cubit. Its stem was hollow and delicately turned, and it -ended in a ball inlaid with divers metals. Round its guards in curious -characters was engraved: God will open, the King will enter. The circle -of its ring contained an engraved plaque like to a medal, embossed with -flowers and leaves. And in the centre of the hole was a little plaque -threaded with a delicately twisted cord, and the ring was joined to -the stem by a cube of gold on the four sides of which were embossed -alternately lions and castles. And on the edge of its bulk, between -delicately inlaid arabesques, there was written, in Hebrew words and -Hebrew characters, the same motto as that on the guards, which is in -Latin—‘Rex Regium aperiet: Rex universæ terræ introibit’—the King of -Kings will open, the King of all the earth will enter. Some say the -key and the whole incident is a symbol of the Host being lain in the -custodia.” - -_Juanito_: Oooh! It must have been a rare fine key. When I’m a man, may I -have such a key? - -_Sister Pilar_: I sadly fear, Juanito, that ’tis only to saints that such -keys are given. Think you, you’ll be a saint some day? - -_Juanito_: Not I! They live on lentils and dried peas. I’ll be a tumbler -at the fairs. Already I can stand on my head ... (_catching Pepita’s -eye_) nearly. - -_Pepita_: Pooh! Any babe could stand on their head if some one held their -legs. - -_Juanito_ (_crestfallen and anxious to change the subject_): Could St. -Ferdinand stand on his head? - -_Pepita_ (_much shocked_): For shame, Juanito! Sister Pilar has told us -he was a great saint! - -_Juanito_: How great a one? - -_Sister Pilar_: A very great one. - -_Juanito_: What did he do? - -_Sister Pilar_: Well, he had a great devotion for Our Lady and the -Eucharist. He founded many convents and monasteries.... - -_Pepita_: Did he found ours? - -_Sister Pilar_: It was founded during his reign. - -_Pepita_: How long ago did he live? - -_Sister Pilar_: More than a hundred years ... when your -great-great-grandfather was living. - -_Pepita_: There must have been many a nun lived here since then! - -_Juanito_: How many? A hundred? - -_Sister Pilar_: More. - -_Juanito_: A thousand? - -_Sister Pilar_: Maybe. - -_Juanito_: A million? - -_Sister Pilar_: Nay, not quite a million. - -_Juanito_: Think you, they’d like to be alive again? - -_Sister Pilar_: Ah! no. - -_Juanito_: Why? - -_Sister Pilar_: Because either they are in Paradise or will go there soon. - -_Juanito_: Do all nuns go to Paradise? - -_Sister Pilar_: I ... er ... I hope so. - -_Juanito_: Will you go? - -_Sister Pilar_: I hope so. - -_Juanito_: Will Sister Assumcion go? - -_Sister Pilar_: I hope so. - - _JUANITO is silent for a second or two, then he begins to - laugh._ - -_Juanito_: All those nuns, and when they die new ones coming! Why, it’s -like Don Juan Tenorio springing up again in our game! - -_Pepita_ (_extremely shocked_): Oh, Juanito! - -_Juanito_: Well, and so it is! And old Domingo says that his ghost tries -o’ nights to steal the live nuns, but the dead ones beat him back. - -_Pepita_: Yes, and it’s Don Juan that makes the flowers and the corn -grow, and that’s what the game is that Domingo taught us. - -_Juanito_: Let me sing it! - -_Pepita_: No, me! - -_Sister Pilar_: Children! Children! This is all foolish and evil talk. It -is God, as you know well, that makes the corn grow. You should not listen -to old Domingo. - -_Juanito_: Oh, but he tells us fine tales of Roland and Belermo and the -Moorish king that rode on a zebra.... I like them better than the lives -of the Saints. Come, Pepita, let’s go and play. - - _They pick up their balls and run off and begin tossing them - against one of the walls of the court._ - -_Sister Pilar_ (_musing_): They too ... they too ... pretty flowers -and butterflies upon the margin of the hours that catch one’s eye and -fancy.... Pretty brats of darkness ... and yet Juanito is only five -and is floating still, a little Moses, on the waters of Baptism. Soft -wax ... but where is the impress of the seal of the King of Kings? He -is a pigmy sinner, and albeit the vanities pursued by him are tiny -things—balls and sweetmeats and pagan stories—still are they vanities, -and with his growth will they grow. Jesus! My nightmare vision! Sin, -sin, sin everywhere! Babes turn hideous. Dead birds caught by the fowler -and turned into his deadliest snares. The fiends of hell shrink to their -stature and ape their innocence and serious eyes; and how many virgins -that the love of no man could have lured, have, through longing for -children, been caught in concupiscence? Oh, sin and works of darkness, I -am so weary of you! - - _Beyond the wall a jovial male voice is heard singing_: - - Derrière chez mon père - Il est un bois taillis, - Serai-je nonnette, oui ou non? - Serai-je nonnette, je crois que non! - - Le rossignol y chante, - Et le jour et la nuit, - Il chante pour les filles - Qui n’ont pas d’ami. - Il ne chante pas pour moi - J’en ai un, Dieu merci, - Serai-je nonnette, oui ou non? - Serai-je nonnette, je crois que non! - - _Enter DENNYS, disguised as a mendicant friar._ - -_Dennys_: Christ, and His Mother, and all the Saints be with you, -daughter. Whew! Your porter’s a lusty-sinewed rogue, and he was loath to -let me enter, saying that he and the maid he’s courting were locked up -in a church by one of my order and not let out till he had paid toll of -all that he had in his purse (_throws back his head and laughs_), and I -asked him if the maid lost something too, but.... - -_Sister Pilar_ (_very coldly_): What is your pleasure, brother? - -_Dennys_: My pleasure? Need you ask that of a mendicant friar? Why, my -pleasure is the grease of St. John of the golden beard, the good sweat -of gold coins—that is my pleasure. “Nothing for myself, yet drop it into -the sack,” as your proverb has it. And, in truth, ’tis by the sweat -of our brow that we, too, live; oh, we are most learned and diligent -advocates, and, though we may skin our clients’ purses, down to robbing -them of their mule and stripping them of their cloak, yet we are tireless -in their cause, appealing from court to court till we reach the Supreme -Judge and move Him to set free our poor clients, moaning in the dungeons -of Purgatory. There is no cause too feeble for my pleading; by my -prayers a hundred stepmothers, fifty money-lenders, eighty monks, and -twenty-five apostate nuns have won to Paradise; so, daughter if you will -but ... (_catches sight of PEPITA and JUANITO who have stolen up, and -are listening to him open-mouthed_) Godmorrow, lord and lady! I wonder -... has this poor friar any toy or sugar-plum to please little lords and -ladies? (_PEPITA and JUANITO exchange shy, excited looks, laugh and hang -their heads._) Now, my hidalgo, tell me would you liefer have a couple of -ripe figs or two hundred years off Purgatory? (_He winks at SISTER PILAR, -who has been staring at him with a cold surprise._) - -_Pepita_ (_laughing and blushing_): I’d like to see the figs before I -answer. - -_Dennys_ (_with a loud laugh_): Well answered, Doña Doubting Thomas -(_turning to SISTER PILAR_). You Spaniards pass at once for the most -doubting and the most credulous of the nations. You believe every word -of your priest and doubt every word of your neighbour. Why, I remember -... may I sit down, daughter?... I remember once at Avila.... - -_Pepita_: You have not yet shown us these two figs. - -_Dennys_: No, nor I have! As your poor folk say, “One ‘take’ is worth a -score of ‘I’ll gives.’” Give me your balls. (_He makes cabalistic signs -over them._) There now, they are figs, and brebas at that! What, you -don’t believe me? (_noticing their disappointed faces._) It must be at -the next meeting, little lord and lady. Half a dozen for each of you, my -word as a tr—— as a friar. But you must not let me keep you from your -business ... I think you have business with a ball, over at that wall -yonder? - -_Pepita and Juanito_: Come and play with us. - -_Dennys_: No, no, it would not suit my frock. Another day, maybe. Listen, -get you to your game of ball, but watch for the Moor who may come -swooping down on you like this (_He catches them up in his arms, they -laughing and struggling_): fling them over his shoulders as it were a bag -of chestnuts. Then hie for the ovens of Granada! (_He trots them back to -the wall, one perched on either shoulder._) Now, my beauties, you busy -yourselves with your ball and expect the Moor. But mind! He’ll not come -if you call out to him. (_He returns to the bewildered SISTER PILAR._) -I think that will keep them quiet and occupied a little space. Well, I -suppose your sisters are having their _siesta_ and dreaming of ... I’ll -sit here a little space if I may, your court is cool and pleasant. - - (_Pause._) - -_Dennys_ (_looking at her quizzically_): So all day long you sit and -dream and sing the Hours. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_coldly_): And is that not the life of a religious in -your country? - -_Dennys_: And so my tongue has betrayed my birth? Well, it is the Judas -of our members. But I am not ashamed of coming from beyond the Pyrenees. -And as to the life of a religious in France—what with these roving knaves -that call themselves “companions” and make war on every man, and every -woman, too, and the ungracious Jacquerie that roast good knights in the -sight of their lady wife and children, and sack nunneries and rape the -nuns, why the Hours are apt to be sung to an un-gregorian tune. And then -the followers of the Regent slaying the followers of the Provost of Paris -in the streets.... - -_Sister Pilar_: Oh, the hate of kings and dukes and desperate wicked -men! Were such as they but chained, there might be room for peace and -contemplation. - -_Dennys_: The hate of kings and dukes and desperate wicked men! But, -daughter, the next best thing to love is hate. ’Tis the love and hate -of dead kings and lovely dead Infantas has filled the garden-closes -with lilies and roses, and set men dipping cloths in crimson dye, and -broidering them in gold, and breaking spears in jousts and tourneys ... -that love and hate that never dies, but is embalmed in songs and ballads, -and.... - -_Sister Pilar_: Brother, you are pleading the cause of sin. - -_Dennys_: It has no need of my pleading, lady. Why, I know most of the -cots and castles between here and the good town of Paris. I have caught -great, proud ladies at rere-supper in their closets, drinking and jesting -and playing on the lute with clerks and valets, and one of them with his -hand beneath her breast, while her lord snored an echo to the hunter’s -horn that rang through the woods of his dreams; and in roadside inns I -have met little, laughing nuns, who.... - -_Sister Pilar_ (_rising_): You speak exceeding strangely for a friar, nor -is it meet I should hear you out. - -_Dennys_: Nay, daughter, pardon my wild tongue; the tongue plays ever ape -to the ear, and if the ear is wont to hear more ribald jests than paters, -why then the tongue betrays its company ... nay, daughter, before you -go, resolve me this: _what is sin?_ To my thinking ’tis the twin-sister -of virtue, and none but their foster-mother knows one from t’other. Are -horses and tourneys and battles sin? Your own St. James rides a great -white charger and leads your chivalry against the Moors. (_With a sly -wink_) I have met many an hidalgo who has seen him do it! And we are told -there was once an angelic war in Heaven, and I ween the lists are ever -set before God’s throne, and the twelve Champions, each with an azure -scarf, break lances for a smile from Our Lady. And as to rich, strange -cloths and jewels, the raiment of your painted wooden Seville virgins -would make the Queen of France herself look like a beggar maid. And is -love sin? The priests affirm that God is love. Tell me then, daughter, -what is the birth-mark of the twin-sister sin that we may know and shun -her? - -_Sister Pilar_ (_in a very low voice_): Death. - -_Dennys_: Death? (_half to himself_). Yes, I have seen it at its work ... -that flaunting, wanton page at Valladolid, taunting the old Jew doctor -because ere long all his knowledge of herbs and precious stones would -not keep him sweet from the worm, and ere the week was done the pretty -page himself cold and blue and stiff, and all the ladies weeping. And -the burgher’s young wife at Arras, a baby at each breast, and her good -man, his merry blue eyes twinkling, crying, “Oh, my wife is a provident -woman, Dennys, and has laid up two pairs of eyes and four hands and -four strong legs and two warm hearts against her old age and mine” ... -then how he laughed! And ere the babies had cut their first tooth it was -violets and wind-flowers she was nourishing.... Ay, Death ... when I was -a child I mind me, and still sometimes, as I grow drowsy in my bed, my -fancies that have been hived all day begin to swarm—buzzing, stinging, -here, there, everywhere ... then they take shape, and start marching -soberly two and two, bishops and monks, and yellow-haired squires, and -little pert clerks, and oh, so many lovely ladies—those ladies that we -spoke of, who being dead have yet a thousand lives in the dreams of folk -alive—Dame Venus, Dame Helena, the slave-girl Briseis, Queen Iseult, -Queen Guinevere, the Infanta Polyzene; and, although they weep sorely and -beat with their hands, a herald Moor shepherds them to the dance of the -grisly King, who, having danced a round with each of them, hurls them -down into a black pit ... down which I, too, shortly fall ... to come up -at the other side, like figures on Flemish water-clocks, at the birds -matins. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_in an awed voice_): Why ... ’tis strange ... but I, too, -fall asleep thus! - -_Dennys_ (_shaking his finger at her_): For shame, daughter, for the -avowal! It tells of rere-suppers of lentils and _manjar-blanca_ in the -dorter, or, at least, of faring too fatly in the frater ... what if I -blab on you to the Archbishop? Well, this is a piteous grave discourse! I -had meant to talk to you of Life, and lo! I have talked of Death. - - _PEPITA and JUANITO come running up._ - -_Pepita_: We waited and waited, but the Moor _never_ came! - -_Dennys_ (_gazing at them in bewilderment_): The Moor? What Moor ... -Don Death’s trumpeter? Why, to be sure! Beshrew me for a wool-gatherer! -It was this way: as he was riding forth from the gate of Elvira he was -stricken down with colic by Mahound, because in an _olla_ made him by his -Christian slave he had unwittingly eaten of the flesh of swine. - - _The children shriek with laughter._ - -_Juanito_: Oh, you are such a funny man! Isn’t he, Sister Pilar? But you -must come and play with us now. - -_Dennys_: Well, what is the sport to be? - -_Juanito_: Bells of Sevilla ... ’tis about Don Juan Tenorio. - -_Pepita_: But Sister Pilar will never dance, and it takes a big company. - -_Juanito_: We’ll play it three. When we reach the word “grave” we all -fall down flop. Come! - - _They take hands and dance round, singing_: - - Bells of Sevilla, Carmona, and all - Toll, toll, as we carry the pall - (Weep, doñas, weep.) - For Don Juan the fairy - (Chant _miserere_.) - The lovely and brave - Is cold in his grave. - - _They fall down._ - -_Juanito_: But we have none to sing the last _copla_ for us that we may -spring up again. _Dear_ Sister Pilar, couldn’t you _once_? - - _She smilingly shakes her head._ - -_Dennys_: Come, daughter, be merciful. - - _Her expression hardens and she again shakes her head. In the - meantime, SISTER ASSUMCION has come up unobserved, and suddenly - in a clear, ringing voice, she begins to sing_: - - Into the earth, priest, lower the bier, - The glory of Seville is withered and sere - (Weep, doñas, weep.) - But Don Juan Tenorio - (Carol the _gloria_.) - With a caper so brave - Leaps up from the grave. - - _They all jump up laughing. DENNYS stares at SISTER ASSUMCION - with a bold and, at the same time, dazzled admiration. The - sun seems suddenly to shine more brightly upon them and the - children. SISTER PILAR is in the shadow._ - - -SCENE III - - _Nine o’clock in the evening of the same day. The convent’s - orange orchard. From the chapel is wafted the voices of the - nuns singing Compline. A horse whinnies from the other side of - the orchard wall._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_who all through this scene is at the other side of -the wall and hence invisible_): Whist! Muza! Whist, my beauty! (_sings_): - - Ave Maria gloriosa - Virgen Santa, preciosa, - Cómo eres piadosa - Todavía! - - _SISTER ASSUMCION enters as he sings and walks hurriedly - towards the wall._ - -SISTER ASSUMCION (_sings_): - - Gracia plena, sin mancilla, - Abogada, - Por la tu merced, Señora, - Faz esta maravilla - Señalada. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_quickly and tonelessly, as if repeating a -lesson_): Oh, disembodied voice! Like the cuckoo’s, you tell of enamelled -meads watered by fertile streams and of a myriad small hidden beauties -that in woods and mountains the spring keeps sheltered from men’s eyes. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_laughing softly_): Sir knight, howbeit I have never -till this moment heard your voice, yet I can tell ’tis not an instrument -tuned to these words. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: A pox on _trovares_ and clerks, and the French -Courts of Love.... I’ll trust to the union of the moon and my own hot -blood to find me words! - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_mockingly_): The moon’s a cold dead mare, is your -blood a lusty enough stallion to beget ought on _her_? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_with an impatient exclamation_): I’ve not come to -weave fantastic talk like serenading Moors. All I would say can be said -in the Old Christians’ Castilian. - -_Sister Assumcion_: Well, sir knight, speak to me then in Castilian. - - (_Pause._) - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_slowly and deliberately_): So you have come to the -tryst. - -_Sister Assumcion_: So it would seem. - - (_Pause._) - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_as if having come to a sudden resolution_): -Listen, lady. I am no carpet knight, dubbed with a jester’s bladder -at a rere-supper of infantas. I won my spurs when I was fourteen at -the Battle of Salado. Since then I have been in sieges and skirmishes -and night-alarms, enough to dint ten coats of mail. And because there -is great merit in fighting the Moors, I have permitted myself to sin -lustily. I have even lain with the daughters of Moors and Jews, for which -I went on foot to Compostella and did sore penance, for it is a heavy -sin, and the one that brought in days gone by the flood upon the earth. -But never have I sinned with the wife or daughter or kinswoman of my -over-lord, or with one of the brides of Christ. I am from Old Castille, -and I cannot forget my immortal soul. But I verily believe that old witch -Trotaconventos has laid a spell upon me; for she has so inflamed my -blood with her talk of your eyes, your lashes, your small white teeth, -your scarlet lips and gums, your breasts, your flanks, your ankles ... -oh, I know well the tune to which old bawds trumpet their wares; and man -is so fashioned as to be swayed by certain words that act on him like -charms—such as “breasts,” “hips,” “lips”—and must as surely burn at the -naming of them as a hound must prick his ears and bay at the sound of a -distant horn, but it is but with a small, wavering flame, soon quenched, -with a “no, no, gutter-crone, none of your scurvy, worm-eaten goods for -me!” But when the old witch talked of you, ’twas with the honeyed tongue -of Pandar himself, the same that stole from the good Knight, Troilus, all -manliness and pride of arms. And she has strangely stirred my dreams ... -they are ever of scaling towers and mining walls; but, although dreaming, -I know well the towers are not of stone, nor the mines dug in earth ... -lady ... I think I am sick ... I—— - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_frightened_): What ails the man? ... but ... -Trotaconventos ... I had not thought ... ’tis all so strange.... - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_solemnly_): Why did you come to the postern -to-night, Sister Assumcion? - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_angrily_): Why did I come? A pretty question! I came -because of the exceeding importunities of Trotaconventos, who said you -lay sick for love of me. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_low, sternly_): You are the bride of Christ. Is -your profession a light thing? - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_shrilly_): Profession? Much wish I had to be -professed! I do not know who my mother was nor who my father. I was -reared by the priest of a little village near the Moorish frontier. He -was good-natured enough so long as the parishioners were regular with -their capons and sucking-pigs laid on the altar for the souls of the -dead, but all he cared for was sport with his greyhound and ferret, -and they said he hadn’t enough Latin to say the _Consecration_ aright, -and that the souls of his parishioners were in dire peril through his -tongue tripping and stumbling over the office of Baptism, so ’twas little -respect for religion that I learned in his house. And so little did I -dream of being professed a nun that though the fear of the Moors lay -black over the village, and the other maids could not go to fill their -pitchers at the well or take the goatherds their midday bread and garlic -without their hearts trembling like a bird, yet as to me I never tired -of hearing the tale of the Infanta Proserpine, who, as she was weaving -garlands in her father’s garden, was stolen by the Moorish king, Pluton; -and I would pray, yes, pray at the shrine of Our Lady on the hill to lull -my guardian-angel asleep and sheath his sword, and on that very day to -send a fine Moorish knight in a crimson _marlota_ and armour glittering -in the sun, clattering down the bridle-path to carry me off to Granada, -where, if it had meant a life of ease and pleasure, I would gladly have -bowed down before the gold and marble Mahound. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: How came you, then, to take the veil? - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_bitterly_): Through no choice of my own. When I was -twelve, the priest said he had law business in Seville, and asked me if -I’d like to go with him. If I’d like to go with him! It was my dream to -see Seville, and I had made in my fancy a silly, simple picture—a town -which was always a great fair, stall upon stall of bright, glittering -merchandise, and laughter and merriment, and tumblers and dancers, -threaded with a blue river upon which ships with silken sails and -figureheads of heathen gods, laden with lords and ladies, and painted -birds that talked, were ever sailing up and down, and all small and very -brightly coloured, like the pictures in a merry lewd book of fables by an -old Spanish _trovar_, Ovid, for which my priest cared more than for his -breviary. And oh, the adventures that were to wait me there! Well, we set -out, I riding behind him on his mule ... if I shut my eyes it all comes -back as if it were but yesterday.... I jolted and sore and squeamish from -my nearness to him, as his linen was as foul as were the corporals in -his Church ... then the band of merchants and their varlets we travelled -with for greater safety on the road.... It was bicker, bicker all the -time between them and my priest ... each time we came to a bridge it was, -“Nay, sir priest, we’ll not let you across for you and your cloth pay -naught to their building and upkeep,” and then.... Oh, ’twas a tedious -journey, and took the heart out of me. Well, we reached Seville towards -dusk ... a close, frowning, dirty town, in truth, nought but a Morisco -settlement such as we had at home—the houses all blank and grim like dead -faces, and oh! the stink of dogs’ corpses! And not a soul to be seen for -fear of the Guzmans and the Ponces.... And yet I’d catch the whiff of -orange-flowers across the walls, and I heard a voice singing the ballad, -_Count Arnaldo_, to the lute ... ’tis strange, these two things, whiffs -of orange-flower at night and the _Count Arnaldo_ ... it has ever been -the same with me, they turn the years to come to music and perfume ... -or, rather, ’tis as if the years had come and gone, and already I was -old and dreaming them back again. Well, albeit like a pious little maid, -I had said a Pater and Ave for the parents of St. Julian that he might -send me a good lodging, ’twas to the house of Trotaconventos the priest -took me that night, and it seemed to me indeed an evil house and she a -witch, and I never closed my eyes all night. Next morning she brought me -here, and after that night, what with its cool dorter and frater, and its -_patio_ and gardens, it seemed like the castle of Rocafrida—the fairy -houses in ballads; and whether I would or not I became a novice ... a -dowerless novice without clothes or furniture, and never a coin even to -give the servants at Christmas ... and then ... what would you? Once a -novice ’tis wellnigh impossible to ’scape the black veil (_her tone once -more bantering_). And that’s the end of the story, and may the good -things that come be for all the shire. Did the daughters of the Moors and -Jews tell you such prosy tales? - - (_Pause._) - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: You have not yet told me why you came to the -postern to-night. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_in a voice where archness tries to conceal -embarrassment_): Why, you must be one of the monkish knights of Santiago! -I feel like a penitent in the Confessional ... _mea culpa, mea culpa, mea -maxima culpa_, aha! aha! - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_very solemnly_): I will know. Did that old witch -in mandragora or henbane, or whatever be the hellish filters that hold -the poison of love, pour _me_ hurtling and burning through your veins as -you were poured through mine? - -_Sister Assumcion_: Jesus!... I ... she did indeed please my fancy with -the picture that she drew of you ... but come, sir knight! You forget I -have not yet seen your face, much less.... - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_slowly_): So on a cold stomach, through caprice -and a little _accidia_ you were ready to forfeit eternal bliss and ... I -will not mince my words ... make Our Lord Jesus Christ a cuckold? - -_Sister Assumcion_: Well, of all the strange talk! I vow, Sir Knight, -it is as if you blamed me for coming to the tryst. Have you forgotten -how for weeks you did importune that old witch with prayers and vows and -tears and groans that she should at least contrive I should hold speech -with you to give you a little ease of your great torment? And what’s -more, ’tis full six weeks since you began plaguing me by proxy; at least, -I have not failed in coyness. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: True, lady, I ask your pardon. Why should I blame -you for my dreams? (_half to himself_) a phantom fire laying waste a -land of ghosts and shadows ... then a little wind wafting the smell of -earthly things ... wet flowers and woods ... its wings dropping wholesome -rain and lo! the fantastic flames with dying hisses vanish in the smoke -that kindled them.... Lips? Lashes? Haunches? I spoke foolishly; they -are not enough. How can I tell my dreams? (_his voice grows wild_). Lips -straining towards lips against the pulling back of all the hosts of -Heaven ... a sin so grave as to be own sister to virtue ... oh! sweetness -coming out of horror ... once my horse’s hoofs crushed a seven years’ old -Moorish maid ... ooh! - - _During the last words, SISTER PILAR has crept up unperceived._ - -_Sister Pilar_: Sister, I missed you at Compline. - -_Sister Assumcion_: Indeed! And in the interval have you been made -prioress or sub-prioress? - -_Sister Pilar_: Sister Assumcion, this is not the time for idle taunts. I -cannot say I love you, and in this I know I err, for no religious house -can flourish except Sisters Charity, Meekness, and Peace are professed -among its nuns. But I came for the honour of this house.... God knows -its scutcheon is blotted enough ... have you forgotten Sister Isabel?... -believe me I _must_ speak; it would go ill with me were I to see a sister -take horse for hell and not catch hold of the bridle, nay, fling my body -underneath the hoofs, if that could stop the progress. - -_Sister Assumcion_: And what is all this tedious prose? Because, -forsooth, feeling faint at Compline, I crept out to take the evening air. - -_Sister Pilar_: You lie, sister. Think you I am deaf? As I drew near a -man’s voice reached me from the other side of the wall. (_Raising her -voice._) Most impious of all would-be adulterers, know that your banns -will be forbidden by the myriad voices of the Church Militant, the Church -Triumphant, _and_ the Church in Torment. For she (and all nuns do so), -who through the watches of the night prays for the dead, raises up a -ghostly bodyguard to fight for her virginity. Beware of the dead! They -hedge this sister round. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_shrilly_): You canting, white-lipped, sneering -witch! You whose breasts are no bigger than a maid of twelve! You ... you -... this talk comes ill from you ... do you think me blind? Oh, Sister -Vanity, what of your veil drawn down so modestly to your eyes in frater -or in chapter, but when there are lay visitors in the parlour, or even -Don Jaime gossiping in the _patio_, have I not seen that same veil creep -up and up, till it reveals the broad, white brow? Oh, and the smile -hoarded like a miser’s gold that when at last it is disclosed all may the -more marvel at the treasure of small, white teeth! Oh, swan who loves -solitude but who, of all birds, is the most swayed by the music of ... -mendicant friars! - -_Sister Pilar_: Silence! - -_Sister Assumcion_: Aha! That shaft went home! What of the Deadly Sins -grimacing behind the masks of the virtues? Why do you hate me so? Well, -I will tell you. ’Tis the work of our old friend of the Catechism—Envy, -the jaundiced, sour-breathed Don. Remember, Sister Pilar: Thou shalt not -envy thy sister’s flanks, nor her merry tongue, nor her red lips, nor any -of her body’s members. Over my shoulder to-day, I saw the look with which -you followed the friar and me. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_in a voice choked with passion_): Silence! you peasant’s -bastard! You who have crept into a house of high born ladies and made -it stink with as rank a smell as though a goat had laid down among Don -Pedro’s Arab mares. Poor mummer! From a little, red-cheeked, round-eyed -peasant girl, I have seen you moulding yourself to the pattern of our -high-born visitors—from one the shrill laugh, from another the eyes -blackened with kohl, from a third the speech flowery from _Amadis_ and -other profane books—but all the civet and musk your fancy pours on -your image of yourself cannot drown the peasant’s garlic. You flatter -yourself, Sister Assumcion; _I_, a Guzman, whose mother was a Perez, and -grandame a Padilla, how could I for a second envy _you_? - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_laughing_): But peasant’s blood can show red in the -lips and gums, and a bastard’s breasts can be as full and firm, her limbs -as long and slender as those of a Guzman or a Padilla. Your rage betrays -you, Sister Pilar. I bid you good-night. - - _Exit._ (_Pause._) - -_Sister Pilar_: My God! Envy! It has a sour smell. And rage and pride—two -other deadly sins whose smell is ranker than that of any peasant. -(_Shrilly_) Sloth! Avarice! Gluttony! Lust! Why do you linger? Your -brothers wait for you to begin the feast. - - _Sinks on her knees._ - -Oh, heavenly advocate! Sweet Virgin of compassion, by your seven joys and -seven sorrows I beseech you to intercede for me. I have sinned, I have -sinned, my soul has become loathsome to me. Oh, Blessed Virgin, a boon, a -boon! That either by day or in the watches of the night, though it be but -for a second of time I may behold the woof of things without the warp of -sin ... a still, quiet, awful world, and all the winds asleep. - - _From beyond the wall comes a small whinny, then the jingle of - spurs and the sound of departing hoofs. SISTER PILAR starts - violently._ - - - - -ACT II - - -SCENE I - - _A room in TROTACONVENTOS’S house. The walls are hung with - bunches of dried herbs and stags’ antlers. On a table stands - a big alembic surrounded by snakes and lizards preserved in - bottles, and porcupines’ quills. TROTACONVENTOS is darning a - gorget and talking to DON SALOMON. The beginning of this scene - is happening simultaneously with the last part of the previous - one._ - -_Trotaconventos_: A fig for a father’s love! To seek for it is, as the -proverb has it, to seek pears on an elm tree. - -_Don Salomon_: Pardon me, oh pearl of wisdom. Our Law has shown that a -mother’s love is as dross to a father’s. In the book called Genesis we -are told that when there was the flood of water in the time of Noah, -the fathers fled with their sons to the mountains, and bore them on -their heads that the waters might not reach them, while the mothers took -thought only of their own safety, and climbed up on the shoulders of -their sons. And at the siege of Jerusalem.... - -_Trotaconventos_: Oh, a pox on you and your devil’s lore! It is proverbs -and songs that catch truth on the wing, and they tell ever of a mother’s -love. Would you have me believe in your love to Pepita and Juanito when -I saw new hopes and schemes spring up as quickly in your heart as the -flowers on Isabel’s grave.... I never yet have met a man who could mourn -the dead; for them ’tis but the drawing of a rotten molar, a moment’s -sharp pain, and then albeit their gums may ache a day, they will already -be rejoicing in the ease and freedom won by its removal. - -_Don Salomon_: There was once a young caliph, and though he had many and -great possessions, the only one he valued a fig was one of his young -wives. She died, and night descended on the soul of the caliph. One -evening her spirit came to him, as firm and tangible as had been her -body, and after much sweet and refreshing discourse between them, beneath -which his grief melted like dew, she told him that he might at will evoke -her presence, but that each time he did so he would forfeit a year of -life.... He invoked her the next night, and the next, and the next ... -but he was close on eighty when he died. - -_Trotaconventos_ (_triumphantly_): Just so! The caliph was a man; you do -but confirm my words. - -_Don Salomon_: Well, let us consider, then, _your_ love to your children. -First, there was Isabel, and next, that exceeding handsome damsel, Sister -Assumcion ... nay, nay, it is vain protesting; the whole town knows she -was a cunning brat that all your forty summers and draughts and chirurgy -were powerless to keep out of the world ... well, these two maids, both -lusty and vegetal, and made for the bearing of fine children, what -must you do but have them both professed in one of these nunneries ... -_nunneries_! Your ballads tell of a Moorish king who was wont to exact -a yearly tribute of sixty virgins from your race; what of your God who -exacts more like a thousand? - -_Trotaconventos_: Out on you, you foul-mouthed blaspheming Jew! I’d have -you bear in mind that you are in the house of an Old Christian.[2] - -_Don Salomon_: Ay, an Old Christian who recked so little of her law and -faith that, just because they paid a little more, has suckled the brats -of the Moriscos![3] - -_Trotaconventos_: Pooh! An old dog does not bark at a tree-stump; you’ll -not scare me with those old, spiteful whispers of _los Abades_. Come, -drag me before the _alcalde_ and his court, and I’ll disprove your words -with this old withered breast ... besides, as says the proverb, He whose -father is a judge goes safe to trial—Trotaconventos walks safe beneath -the cloak of Doña Maria de Padilla, for Queen Blanche dies a virgin-wife, -if there be any virtue in my brews. - -_Don Salomon_: You took it for a threat? Come, come, you are growing -suspicious with advancing years. But we were talking of your love to your -daughters. Resolve me this: why did you make them nuns? - -_Trotaconventos_: Why did I make them nuns? Because of all professions, -it is the most pleasing to God and His Saints. - -_Don Salomon_: So that was your reason? Well, I read your action somewhat -differently. Of all the diverse flames that burn and corrode the heart -of man, there is none so fierce as the flames of a mother’s jealousy of -her growing daughters. You have known that flame—the years that withered -your charms were ripening theirs, and, that you might not endure the -bitterness of seeing them wooed and kissed and bedded, you gave them—to -your God. Wait! I have not yet said my say. Rumours have reached me -of the flame you have kindled in the breast of an exceeding rich and -noble knight for Sister Assumcion, and that, albeit, you knew a score of -other maids would have been as good fuel, and brought as good a price; -just as some eight years since, you chose Isabel to kindle the fire in -me. Why? Of all your so-called learned doctors—the most of them but -peasants, trembling, as they roast the chestnuts on winter nights, at -their grandame’s tales—there is one I do revere, Thomas Aquinas, for -he is deeply read in the divine Aristotle, and, to boot, he knows the -human heart. Well, your Thomas Aquinas tells of a sin which he calls -‘morose delectation,’ which is the sour pleasure—a dried olive to palates -too jaded now for sweet figs—that monks and nuns and women past their -prime find in the viewing of, or the hearing of, or the thinking of the -bodily joys of the young and lusty. And ‘morose delectation’ is never so -bitter-sweet as when aroused in a mother by the amours of her daughter, -and this it was that got in your bosom the upper hand of jealousy and -made you choose your own daughters to inflame the love of this knight and -me. - -_Trotaconventos_: Well ... by Our Lady ... you ... (_bursts out -laughing_). Why, Don Salomon, in spite of all your rabbis and rubbish, -you have more good common sense than I had given you credit for! (_laughs -again_). - - _DON SALOMON, in spite of himself, gives a little complacent - smile._ - -_Don Salomon_: Laughter is the best physic; I am glad to have been able -to administer it. But to return to the real purport of my visit. I tell -you, you are making the convent of San Miguel to stink both far and wide, -and I look upon it as no meet nursery for Moses and Rebecca. - -_Trotaconventos_: Moses and Rebecca! Truly most pretty apt names for -Christian children! But think you not that Judas and Jezebel would ring -yet sweeter on the ear? Then, without doubt, their Christian playmates -would pelt them through the streets with dung and dead mice—Moses and -Rebecca, forsooth! In the city of Seville they will ever be Pepita and -Juanito. - -_Don Salomon_: Pepita and Juanito ... foolish, tripping names to suit the -lewd comic imps of hell in one of your miracle plays. The Talmud teaches -there is great virtue in names, and when they come with me to Granada -they will be Moses and Rebecca. - -_Trotaconventos_: Go with you to Granada? What wild tale is this? - -_Don Salomon_: ’Tis no wild tale. You rated me for indifference to my -children, but I am not so indifferent as to wish to see them reared in -ignorance and superstition by a flock of empty-headed, vicious nuns who -have become like Aholah and Aholibah, they who committed whoredoms in -Egypt. - -_Trotaconventos_: Once more, an old dog does not bark at a tree-stump. -_You’ll_ never go to Granada. - -_Don Salomon_: And why not, star-reader? - -_Trotaconventos_: Because you are of the race of Judas that sold our -Lord for a few sueldos. There are many leeches more learned than you in -Granada, but none in Castille, therefore.... - -_Don Salomon_ (_indignantly_): Whence this knowledge of the leeches of -Granada? Name me one more learned than I. - -_Trotaconventos_ (_ignoring the interruption_): Therefore, in that in -Castille you earn three times what you would do in Granada, you will -continue following the court from Valladolid to Toledo, from Toledo to -Seville, until the day when you are unable to save Don Pedro’s favourite -slave, and he rifles your treasure and has you bound with chains and cast -into a dungeon to rot slowly into hell. - -_Don Salomon_ (_quite unmoved_): Howbeit, you will see that to one of my -race his children are dearer than his coffers. Unless this convent gets -in better odour, Moses and Rebecca will soon be playing in Granada round -the Elvira gate, and sailing their boats upon the Darro ... have you that -balsam for me? - -_Trotaconventos_: Ay, and have you two maravedis for it? - -_Don Salomon_ (_taking out two coins from his purse_): Are you, indeed, -an Old Christian? Had you no grandam, who, like your own daughter, was -not averse to a circumcised lover? Methinks you love gold as much as any -Jew. - -_Trotaconventos_ (_drops the coins on the table and listens to their -ring_): Yes, they sing in tune; a good Catholic _doremi_, I’d not be -surprised to hear coins from _your purse_ whine ‘alleluia’ falsely -through their nose—the thin noise of alloy and a false mint. (_Goes -and rummages in a coffer, and with her back turned to him, says -nonchalantly_): Neither your ointment nor the Goa stones powdered in milk -have reduced the swelling. - - _DON SALOMON does not answer, and TROTACONVENTOS looks sharply - over her shoulder._ - -_Trotaconventos_: Well? - - _He looks at her in silence. She walks over to him._ - -_Trotaconventos_: Here is your balsam. As touching sickness, I have ever -hearkened to you; you may speak. - -_Don Salomon_: The ointment ... I hoped it might give you some relief of -your pain; but as to the swelling.... - -_Trotaconventos_: It will not diminish? - -_Don Salomon_: No. - -_Trotaconventos_: You are certain, Don Salomon? - -_Don Salomon_: Yes. - -_Trotaconventos_: But ... surely ... the Table of Spain, Don Pedro’s -carbuncle ... I verily believe Doña Maria could get me it for a night ... -’tis the most potent stone in the world. - -_Don Salomon_: Dame, you have ever liked plain speaking. Neither in the -belly of the stag, nor in the womb of the earth, nor in God’s throne, is -there a precious stone that can decrease that swelling. - -_Trotaconventos_: Can one live long with it? - -_Don Salomon_: No. - -_Trotaconventos_: How long? - -_Don Salomon_: I cannot say to a day. - - _TROTACONVENTOS sinks wearily down into a chair. DON SALOMON - gazes at her in silence for a time, then comes up and lays his - hand on her shoulder._ - -_Don Salomon_ (_gravely_): Old friend, from my heart I envy you. A wise -man who had travelled over all the earth came to the court of a certain -caliph, and the caliph asked him whom of all the men he had met on his -wanderings he envied most; and the wise man answered: ‘Oh, Caliph, ’twas -an old blind pauper whose wife and children were all dead.’ And when the -caliph asked him why he envied one in such sorry plight, he answered, -‘because the only evil thing is fear, and he had nought to fear.’ You, -too, have nothing to fear, except you fear the greatest gift of God—sleep. - - _Exit quietly._ - -_Trotaconventos_ (_wildly_): Nothing to fear! Oh, my poor black soul ... -hell-fire ... the devil hiding like a bug in my shroud ... oh, Blessed -Virgin, save me from hell-fire! - - _The ghost of DON JUAN TENORIO appears._ - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: There is no hell. - -_Trotaconventos_: Who are you? Speak! - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: I am the broad path that leads to salvation; I am -the bread made of wheat; I am the burgeoning of buds and the fall of the -leaf; I am the little white wine of Toro and the red wine of Madrigal; -I am the bronze on the cheek of the labourer and his dreamless, midday -sleep beneath the chestnut tree; I am the mirth at wedding-wakes; I am -the dance of the Hours whose rhythm lulls kings and beggars, nuns, and -goatherds on the hills, giving them peace, and freeing them from dreams; -I am innocence; I am immortality; I am Don Juan Tenorio. - -_Trotaconventos_: Don Juan Tenorio? Then you come from hell. - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: I have spoken: there is no hell. There is no hell -and there is no heaven; there is nought but the green earth. But men are -arrogant and full of shame, and they hide truth in dreams. - -_Trotaconventos_: Ay, but what of the black sins that weigh down my soul? - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: Dreams are the only sin. - -_Trotaconventos_: What, then, of death? - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: Every death is cancelled by a birth; hence there is -no death. - -_Trotaconventos_: But I must surely die, and that ere long. - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: But if others live? Prisoners! Prisoners! Locked up -inside yourselves; like children born in a dark tower, as their parents -were before them. And round and round they run, and beat their little -hands against the wall, or stare at the old faded arras upon which -fingers, dead a hundred years ago, have pictured quaint shapes that hint -at flowers and birds and ships. And all the time the creaking door is on -the jar, the gaolers long since dead. - - _The ghost of SISTER ISABEL appears._ - -_Sister Isabel_: Mother! - -_Trotaconventos_ (_in horror_): Isabel! - -_Sister Isabel_: I come from Purgatory. - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: Still a prisoner, bound by the dreams of the living. - -_Sister Isabel_: As they are by the dead. - -_Trotaconventos_: Why do you visit me, daughter? - -_Sister Isabel_: To bid you save my little son from circumcision, my -daughter from concubinage to the infidels. - -_Trotaconventos_: How? - -_Sister Isabel_: By preserving the virginity of my sisters in religion. - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: Virginity! What of Christ’s fig-tree? - -_Sister Isabel_: Demon, what do _you_ know of Christ? - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: Once we were one, but.... - -_Sister Isabel_: Lying spirit! - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: That part of me that was he, was sucked bloodless by -the insatiable dreams of man. - -_Sister Isabel_: Mother, hearken not.... - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: Hearken not.... - -_Sister Isabel_: To this lying spirit. - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: To this spirit drugged with dreams. - -_Sister Isabel_: Else you will forfeit.... - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: Else you will forfeit.... - -_Sister Isabel_: Your immortal soul. - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: Your immortal body. - -_Sister Isabel_: All is vanity, - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: All is vanity. - -_Sister Isabel_: Save only the death, - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: Save only the death, - -_Sister Isabel_: And the resurrection, - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: And the resurrection, - -_Sister Isabel_: Of our Lord Jesus Christ. - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: Of crops and trees and flowers and the race of man. - -_Sister Isabel_: Remember that they fight to lose who fight the dead. - -_Don Juan Tenorio_: Remember that they fight to lose who fight the Spirit -of Life. - - _A violent knocking at the door. The ghosts of DON JUAN TENORIO - and SISTER ISABEL vanish. TROTACONVENTOS sits up and rubs her - eyes._ - -_Trotaconventos_: I have been dreaming ... life ... death ... my head -turns. And what is this knocking? - -_Voice outside_: Old stinking bird-lime! Heart-hammer! Magpie! -Bumble-bee! Street trailer! Cuirass of rotten wood! Curry-comb! Corpus -dragon! I bid you open, d’ye hear? - -_Trotaconventos_: Why, I do believe ’tis that ardent lover, Don Manuel de -Lara. Can the baggage have shied from the tryst? - -_Voice from outside_: Gutter crone! Gutter crone! The fiends of hell gnaw -your marrow! I want in! - -_Trotaconventos_: Anon, good knight, anon! Well ... shall I throw cold -water on his hopes and save my soul? Nay, Isabel, ’tis too late; one -cannot make shepherds’ pipes out of this old barley straw ... and yet -... visions of sleep! Nay, through my living daughter will I taste again -the old joys and snap my fingers at ... ghosts. - - _Opens the door. DON MANUEL DE LARA bursts into the room._ - -DON MANUEL DE LARA: Old hag, what have you done to me? You have been -riding among the signs of the Zodiac ... I know ... and tampering with -the Scales, putting sweetness in each, then throwing in the moon to turn -the balance. Oh, you have given me philtres ... I know, I know ... some -varlet bribed with a scarlet cloak, then strange liquid dreams curdling -the rough juice of the Spanish grape ... and you all the while jeering -and cackling at me! (_seizes her roughly by the shoulders._) How dare you -meddle with my dreams? You play with loaded dice. - -_Trotaconventos_ (_soothingly_): Wo! ass! Let me rub thee down, ass of my -wife’s brother! You must have got an ague; the water of the Guadalquivir -and Seville figs play strange tricks with Castilian stomachs in May. A -little prayer to St. Bartholomew ... or better still, a very soothing -draught I learnt to brew long since from a Jew doctor. Why, sir knight, -what is this talk of love philtres? The only receipt _I_ know for such is -a gill of neat ankle or merry eye to three gills of hot young blood. And -have you no thanks for your old witch? I cannot, let evil tongues wag as -they will, drum the moon from the heavens, but trust old Trotaconventos -to draw a nun from her cloister! - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_who has been standing as if stunned_): Aye, -there’s the rub ... I’d have the moon dragged from the heavens (_laughs -wildly, then turns upon her violently_). Oh, I’ll shake your black soul -out of its prison of rotted bones. I am encompassed all around with your -spells. - -_Trotaconventos_: Don Manuel, you are sick. Lie down on this couch and -take a cool draught of reason, for it, at least, is a medicinal stream. -You have engendered your own dreams, there have been no philtres or -spells. The abbot dines off his singing, and a procuress must suit all -tastes, and if a silly serving-wench comes to me a-sighing and a-sobbing -for some pert groom with a heron’s feather in his cap, or trembling -lest Pedro in her distant village is giving his garlic-scented kisses -to another maid, why, then I know nothing will salve her red eyes but -sunflower seeds culled when Venus is in the house of the Ram, or a -mumbling backwards of the psalms, on a waxen heart to melt over the fire. -But these are but foolish toys for the vulgar, and the devil does not -reveal his secrets to an Old Christian who goes to mass every Sunday and -on feast-days too. You are not bewitched, Don Manuel, except it be by a -pair of gray eyes smiling beneath a nun’s veil. Was she coy, perchance? -Why, coyness in a maid.... - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_laughing bitterly_): Coy? (_impatiently._) I came -here all hot with projects and decision, but now it is all flowing out -of me like wine from a leaking pig-skin, and I seem bereft of will and -desire, as sometimes on the field of battle when I fight in a dream, -regardless if the issue be life or death. (_Shaking himself._) The fault -lies not with you, good dame; what you set out to do you have done, the -which I shall bear in mind. As to spells and philtres, they say I was -born under Saturn with the moon in the ascendant, and, whether it be -true or no, some evil star distills dark, poisonous vapours round the -nettles and rank roots that grow in the dark places of my soul, the which -some chance word will draw from their hiding-place and ... in plain -words, your nun is all your words painted her, but falls far short of the -lineaments lent her by my fancy; for which it is not you but that same -unbridled fancy, that is to blame. In that you compassed the meeting, you -shall have rich cloths and a well-filled purse, but.... - -_Trotaconventos_ (_her indignation boiling over_): Jesus! Here is a -dainty Don! Comes far short of the linen lent her by _your_ fancy! Was -then her linen foul? Or rather, are you like Alfonso the Wise, and had -you had the making of her would you have fashioned her better than God? I -know your breed; as the proverb says, it is but a fool that wants a bread -not made with wheat. In truth, the girl is well-formed, sprightly and -hot-blooded. I know no damsel can so well.... - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: I have told you dame, you shall be well paid for -your pains. But ... but ... there is another matter with regard to which -I would fain.... - -_Trotaconventos_: And so you deem old Trotaconventos cares for naught but -cloths and purses! And what of the pride in my craft? Upon my soul! My -daintiest morsel sniffed at all round, and then Don Cat, with a hump of -his back, his tail arched, and his lips drawn back in disdain.... - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Come, dame, I am pressed for time. I ask your -pardon if I have been over nice, and you have no need to take umbrage for -your craft. I ... would ... would ask your help ... (_sinks into a chair -and covers his face with his hands_) ... my God, I cannot. The words -choke me. - - _There is a knock at the door._ - -_Voice from outside_: Hola! Hecate! Goddess of the cross-roads! Open in -your graciousness. - -_Trotaconventos_: ’Tis a stranger’s voice. (_Aside_) This time ’tis a -case of better the devil one does _not_ know. - - _Opens the door. Enter DENNYS._ - -_Dennys_: Hail! Medea of Castille! Your fame has drawn me all the way -from France. Why, ’twill soon rival the fame of your St. James, and from -every corner of Christendom love-sick wights and ladies will come to you -on pilgrimage. - -_Trotaconventos_ (_laughing and eyeing him with evident favour_): A pox -on your flowery tongue! I know you French of old ... hot tongues and -cold, hard hearts. Oh, you saucy knave; you! But see, your cloak is wet -with dew. Come, I will shake it for you. (_Draws off his cloak and at the -same time slips her hand down his neck and tickles him_). - -_Dennys_: A truce! A truce! Thus you could unman me to yield you all my -gold and tell you all my secrets. (_Wriggles out of the cloak, leaving it -in her hands._) Do you know the ballad of the Roman knight, Joseph, and -Doña Potiphar? - -_Trotaconventos_: Ay, that I do; and a poor puling ballad it is too! But -_you_ are no Sir Joseph, my pretty lad ... while others that I know ... -(_glances resentfully at DON MANUEL DE LARA, who is still sitting with -his head buried in his hands. DENNYS, following her glance, catches sight -of him._) - -_Dennys_: Some poor, love-sick wight? Why, then, are we guild brothers, -and of that guild _you_ are the virgin, fairer and more potent than she -of the kings or of the waters; as with fists and cudgels we will maintain -against all other guilds at Holy Week. Oh! I have heard of your miracles. -That pious young widow with a virtue as unyielding as her body was soft, -how.... - -_Trotaconventos_: Out on you, you saucy Frenchman! It would take a French -tongue to call Trotaconventos a virgin. Why, before you were born ... -come, I’ll tell you a secret. (_She whispers something in his ear. He -bursts out laughing._) - -_Dennys_: Holy Mother of God! You should have given suck to Don Ovid. -Why, _that_ beats all the French _fabliaux_. Well, now as to my business. -You must know I had a wager that, disguised as a mendicant friar, I would -visit undiscovered twenty of the convents of Seville.... - -_Trotaconventos_ (_chuckling_): A bold and merry wager! - -_Dennys_: Ay, but that is but the prelude. In one of these convents (_DON -MANUEL drops his hands from his face and sits up straight in his chair_) -I fell into an ambush laid by Don Cupid himself. - -_Trotaconventos_ (_bitterly_): To be sure! And so you come to old -Trotaconventos. To be a procuress is to be the cow at the wedding, for -ever sacrificed to the junketings of others. ’Tis other folks’ burdens -killed the ass. Well, the time is short, the time is short, if you want -Trotaconventos’s aid. - -_Dennys_: Why, despite her habit, ’twas the fairest maid I have seen -this side the Pyrenees, and I swear ’tis a sin she should live a nun. I -fell to talking and laughing with her; but though she is a ripe plum, I -warrant, ’tis for another hand to shake the branch. Now you, mother, I -know, go in and out of every convent in Seville.... So will you be my -most cunning and subtle ambassador? - -_Trotaconventos_: Ay, but ambassadors are given services of gold, and -sumpter-mules laden with crimson cloths, and retinues of servants, and -apes and tumblers and dancers, and purses of gold. How will _you_ equip -your ambassador? - -_Dennys_: A _trovar’s_ fortune is his tongue and lips; so with my lips I -pay. (_He gives her three smacking kisses._) - -_Trotaconventos_: Oh, you French jackanapes! Oh, you saucy ballad-monger! -So you hold your kisses weigh like _maravedis_, do you? Well, well, I -have ever said that the lips of a fine lad hold the sweetest wine in -Spain. Now you must acquaint me more fully with your business, if you -would have me speed it. - -_Dennys_: Why! You know it all. I love a nun of the Convent of San -Miguel, and.... - - _DON MANUEL DE LARA springs from his bench and seizes him by - the shoulders._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: You scurvy, whoreson, lily-livered, shameless son -of France! _France!_ The teeming dam of whores and ballad-mongers, whose -king flies from his foes shaking a banner broidered with the lilies of -a frail woman’s garden-close. You are in Castille, where lions guard -our virgins in strong towers, and e’er you tamper with the virtue of a -professed virgin of Spain, I will hew you into little pieces to feed my -hounds. (_He shakes him violently._) - -_Trotaconventos_ (_pulling him back by his cloak_): Let go, you solemn, -long-jowled, finicky Judas! You fox in priest’s habit on the silver -centre-piece of a king’s table! Don Cat turned monk that he might the -better catch the monastery mice! Foul Templar escaped from Sodom and -Gomorrah! Who are _you_ to take up the glove for Seville nuns? - - _DON MANUEL, paying no heed to TROTACONVENTOS, holds DENNYS - with one hand, and with the other draws his dagger and places - its point on his throat._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Now, blackbird of St. Bénoit, you’ll tell me the -name of the nun you would seduce. D’ye hear? The name of the nun you -would seduce! - -_Dennys_ (_gasping_): Sister Assumcion. - -_Trotaconventos_: Ah! - - _DON MANUEL lets go of DENNYS, who, pale and gasping, is - supported to the couch by TROTACONVENTOS, she mingling the - while words of condolence with DENNYS and imprecations against - the DON._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_to himself_): Strange! Passing strange! That -Moorish knight who gave me the head wound at Gibraltar ... then years -later both serenading ’neath the same balcony, in Granada ... and then -again, last year, of a sudden coming on his carved, olive face staring -at the moon from a ditch in Albarrota. And I convinced, till then, that -our lives were being twisted in one rope to some end.... Chance meetings, -chance partings, chance meetings again. And this _trovar_, coming -to-night, on business ... why am I so beset by dreams? - -_Dennys_: Thanks, mother, the fiery don shook all the humours to my head -(_gets up_). Well, knight, more kicks than ha’pence—that’s the lot of -a _trovar_ in Spain. I know well, necessity makes one embrace poverty -and obedience, like the Franciscans, but I never learnt till now that a -_trovar_ must take the third vow of chastity. - -_Trotaconventos_: Pooh! A rare champion of chastity and the vows of nuns -you see before you! Why, my sweet lad, this same Don Manuel de Lara -has been importuning me with prayers and tears and strange fantastical -ravings, that I should devise a meeting between him ... and whom, think -you? Why, this same Sister Assumcion. - -_Dennys_: Sister Assumcion? - -_Trotaconventos_: Ay, Sister Assumcion. But, as I tell him, he is one of -these fools that seek a bread not made of wheat. He’ll not to bed unless -I rifle hell for him and bring him Queen Helena. He comes to me to-night -with a “comely, yes, but comeliness, what of comeliness?” and “a tempting -enough for Pedro and Juan and the rest of the workaday world, but as to -me!” And she the prettiest nun that ever took the veil, and certain to -bear off the prize for Seville in the contest of beauty with the nuns of -Toledo ... but not good enough for him, oh no! - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Of my thirty years, I have spent sixteen in -fighting the Moors, and if I choose to squander some of the spiritual -treasures I have thus acquired by my sword in ... (_he brings the words -out with difficulty_) dallying with nuns, who knows, maybe _I_ can afford -it. But think you I’ll allow a sinewless French _jongleur_ to rifle the -spiritual treasury of Spain? For Spain is the poorer by every nun that -falls. (_Impatiently_) Pooh! If two whistling false blackbirds choose to -mate, what care I or Spain? Dame, settle this fellow’s business with him, -then ... I would claim a hearing for my own. - - _Sits down on the bench and once more buries his face in - his hands. DENNYS taps his forehead meaningly and winks at - TROTACONVENTOS._ - -_Dennys_: Well, mother, will you be my advocate? Tell her I am master of -arts in the university of Love, and have learnt most cunning and pleasant -gymnastics in Italy, unknown to Pyramus and Troilus ... nay, not that, -for maidens want the moon, to wit, a Joseph with all the cunning in -love’s arts of Naso. Tell her rather, that having been born when Venus -was in the house of Saturn, and the scorpion ... you know the kind -of jargon ... I came into the world already endowed with knowledge of -love’s secrets ... nay ... tell her (_his voice catches fire from his -words_) the years, like village lads when the Feast of St. John draws -near, have built up in my soul a heap of lusty green branches, and old -dry sticks, and frails of dried rose-petals, and many a garland of -rosemary and maiden-hair and ivy and rue, and there it has lain until -one glance from those eyes of hers has been the spark to turn it into a -crackling, flaming, fragrant-smoked bonfire, a beacon to a thousand farms -and hamlets. Tell her I can touch the lute, the vihuela, the guitar, -the psalter, Don Tristram’s harp ... ay, and most delicately touch her -breasts. And if she wishes a little respite from _our_ love, tell her I -can wring tears from her eyes with the Matter of Britain or the Matter -of Rome—sad tales (for sadness turns sweet when it is dead) of Dido and -Iseult and Guinevere, or make her laugh and laugh again with tales from -the clerk Boccaccio. Tell her.... - -_Trotaconventos_: Enough, French rogue! You have little need, it seems, -of an ambassador. Well, I have seen worse-favoured lads and (_with a -scowl in the direction of DON MANUEL_) less honey-tongued. (_She rummages -in a cupboard and brings out a key._) What will you give me for this, -Don Nightingale? I’ll tell you a secret; I have a duplicate key to the -postern of near every convent in Seville, but they are not for _all_ my -clients, oh no! This opens the postern of San Miguel ... well, well, take -it then. And be there to-morrow night at nine o’clock, and I can promise -you your nun will not fail you. - -_Dennys_: Oh, dearer than a mother! oh, most bountiful dame! A key! -A key! (_holds up the key_), I have ever loved a key and held it the -prettiest toy in Christendom. I vow ’twas a key and not an apple that -Eve gave to Adam in Paradise, a key and not an apple the goddesses -strove for on Mount Ida, a key into which the Roman smith, Vulcan, -put all his amorous cunning when he was minded to fashion a gift well -pleasing to his mistress, Venus. May you dream to-night that you are -young again, mother, and hold the keys of heaven. And you, sir knight, -what dreams shall I wish you? (_Eyes DON MANUEL quizzically._) Adieu. - - _Exit._ - -_Trotaconventos_: Ay! May his key bring him joy! A very sweet rogue! -Well, Don Manuel, has your brain cooled enough to talk with me? - - _DON MANUEL, who has remained passive and motionless during the - above scene, suddenly springs to his feet, his eyes blazing, - his cheeks flushed._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_hoarsely_): I, too, would have a key ... for the -convent of San Miguel. - -_Trotaconventos_: And would you in truth? (_suspiciously_). Has the -convent some fairer nun than Sister Assumcion? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: How can I say? I have never seen any of the nuns. -All I ask you, dame, is for a key. - -_Trotaconventos_: And what if I refuse you a key, Sir Arrogance? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: I will pay for it all you ask ... even to my -immortal soul. - -_Trotaconventos_: And what do I want with your immortal soul? I’d as lief -have a wild cat in the house, any market day. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_clenching his fists and glaring at her fiercely_): -A key, a key, old hag! Give me a key. - - _TROTACONVENTOS picks up his scarlet cloak which he has let - drop and waves in his face._ - -_Trotaconventos_: Come, come, brave bull! And has Love, the _bandillero_, -maddened you with his darts? Old Trotaconventos must turn bull-fighter! -Ah! I know the human heart! Dog in the manger, like all men! Too nice -yourself for Sister Assumcion, but too greedy to let another enjoy her! - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: A key! - -_Trotaconventos_: No, no, Sir knight. You are not St. Ferdinand and I am -not the Moorish king that I should yield up the keys of Seville to you -without a parley. Why do you want the key? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_suddenly growing quiet and eyeing her -ironically_): What if I have been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and found -the sun too hot? I have strange fancies. They say the founder of our -house wed with a heathen witch who danced on the hills. (_Persuasively_) -Hearken, I know you love rich fabrics; I have silk coverlets from Malaga -that are ballads for the eye instead of for the ear, silk-threaded -heathen ballads of Mahound and the doves and Almanzor and his Christian -concubine. I have curtains from Almeric—Doña Maria has none to rival them -in the Alcazar—and so fresh-coloured are the flowers that are embroidered -on them, that when I was a child I thought that I could smell them, -and my mother, to coax me to eat when a dry, hot wind was parching the -_Vega_, would tell me the bees had culled the honey spread on my bread -from the flowers embroidered on these curtains. I have necklets of gold, -beaten thin like autumn beech-leaves, taken by my grandsire from the -harems of Cordova when he stormed the city with St. Ferdinand; ere they -were necklets they were ciboriums of the Goths, rifled by impious Tarik. -Precious stones? I have rubies like beakers with the red wine trembling -to their very lip ... one almost fears to lift them except with a steady -hand for fear they spill and stain one’s garments red, and like to wine, -the gifts they bring are health and a merry heart. I have Scythian -sapphires that once lay in the bed of the river of Paradise, while to -win them Arimaspians were fighting Gryphons; they are the gage of the -life to come, they are blue and cold like English ladies’ eyes who go on -pilgrimage. And I have emeralds to catch from them a blue shadow like -that of a kingfisher on green waters. He who has store of precious stones -need fear neither plague nor fever, nor fiends, nor the terrors by night, -and with that store I will endow you if you but give me the key. The key, -good mother, the key! - -_Trotaconventos_: Very pretty ... but ... well ... I know a certain king, -a mighty ugly one, who laughs at the virtues of precious stones.... Aye -... but come, Don Manuel, we are but playing with each other. With your -own eyes you saw me give the key of the Convent of San Miguel to the -French _trovar_. Think you I have two? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_as if stunned_): Not two? To the French _trovar_? - -_Trotaconventos_: Why, yes, Sir knight. Your wits are wool-gathering. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_in great excitement_): My cloak? Where is my -cloak? Away! the key! - - _Exit._ - - -SCENE II - - _The orchard of San Miguel the following evening at nine - o’clock. Near the postern stands DON MANUEL DE LARA, - motionless, his arms folded, his cloak drawn round the lower - part of his face. Towards him hurries SISTER ASSUMCION._ - -_Sister Assumcion_: Good evening, friar _trovar_ ... and can you not come -forward to meet me? I can tell you, sir, it needed all Trotaconventos’s -eloquence to send me to the tryst. Never before has her pleading been so -honeyed.... Why.... - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: I am not the _trovar_, lady. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_starting back_): Holy saints defend me! Who, then, -are you?... And yet your voice.... - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: But I bear a message to you from the _trovar_. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_sharply_): Well? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: His words were these: ‘Tell her the dead grudge us -our joys.’ - -_Sister Assumcion_: What meant he? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: I am a messenger, not a reader of riddles. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_crossing herself_): Strange words! Where was it that -you met him? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: In the streets of Seville ... at night. - -_Sister Assumcion_: And what was he doing? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: He was standing by a niche in which was an image of -Our Lady with a lamp burning before it, and by its light he was examining -a key. And he was laughing. - -_Sister Assumcion_: Well? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: That is all. - -_Sister Assumcion_: All? (_Shrilly_): Who are you? (_Plucks at his cloak -which he allows to fall._) - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Well, and are you any the wiser? - -_Sister Assumcion_: No, your face is unknown to me. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: And yours to me. - -_Sister Assumcion_: And yet, your voice ... by Our Lady, you are an -ominous, louring man. And this strange tale of the _trovar_ ... why am I -to credit it? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Here is the key. - -_Sister Assumcion_: And where is he? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: That I cannot say. - -_Sister Assumcion_: Did he look sick? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: No, in the very bloom of health. - -_Sister Assumcion_: And he was standing under a shrine laughing, and you -approached, and he said, “Tell her the dead grudge us our joys”.... Pooh! -It rings like a foolish ballad. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: It is true nevertheless. - -_Sister Assumcion_: And how came you by the key? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_nonchalantly_): The key? (_holding it out in front -of him and smiling teasingly_). It is delicately wrought. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_stamping_): A madman! - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: So many have said. But now, in that I have borne a -message to you, will you return the grace and bear one for me? I have a -kinswoman in this sisterhood and I would fain speak with her. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_insolently_): Have you in truth? We have no demon’s -kinswomen here ... well, and what is her name? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Sister Pilar. - -_Sister Assumcion_: Aye, _she_ might be ... sprung from the same -still-born, white-blooded grandame. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Ah! (_with suppressed eagerness_). You know Sister -Pilar well? - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_with a short laugh_): Aye, that I do. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: And ... is ... is she well? - -_Sister Assumcion_: She is never ailing. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_absently_): Never ailing. You ... you know her -well? - -_Sister Assumcion_: Without doubt, a madman! I have told you that I know -her but too well. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: On what does her talk turn? - -_Sister Assumcion_: For the most part on our shortcomings. But her words -are few. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_pulling himself together_): Well, you would put -me much in your debt if you would carry her this letter. It bears my -credentials as her kinsman. I would speak with her at once, as I bear -weighty news for her from her home. - -_Sister Assumcion_: And why could you not come knocking at the porter’s -lodge, as others do, and at some hour, too, before Compline, when ends -the day of a religious? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: As to the porter’s lodge, I have my own key. And -the news, I tell you, will not keep till morning. Handle that letter -gingerly; it bears the king’s seal. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_awed_): Don Pedro’s? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Aye. - -_Sister Assumcion_: Well ... as you will. I’ll take your message. -Good-night ... Sir demon; are you not of Hell’s chivalry? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: No. - - _SISTER ASSUMCION shrugs her shoulders, looks at him - quizzically, and exit. A few minutes elapse, during which DON - MANUEL stands motionless; then SISTER PILAR enters; she gives a - slight bow and waits._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: You are Sister Pilar? - -_Sister Pilar_: Yes. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: In the world the Lady Maria Guzman y Perez? - -_Sister Pilar_: Yes. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: I am Don Pablo de Guzman, your father’s cousin’s -son. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_with interest_): Ah! I have heard my father speak of -yours. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: You have not lately, I think, visited your home? - -_Sister Pilar_: Not since I was professed.... _I_ obey the bull of Pope -Boniface, that nuns should keep their cloister. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Your sister, Violante, has lately been wed. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_eagerly_): Little Violante? She was but a child when I -took the black veil. Whom has she wedded? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Er ... er ... a comrade in arms of mine. A knight -of Old Castille ... one Don Manuel de Lara. - -_Sister Pilar_: And what manner of man is he? I should wish little -Violante to be happy. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: He passes for a brave soldier. He has brought her -the skulls of many Moors. She has filled them with earth and planted them -with bulbs. Daffodils grow out of their eyes and nose. - -_Sister Pilar_: A strange device! - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: ’Twas Don Manuel showed her it; such are the -whimsies of Old Castille. In that country we like to play with death. - -_Sister Pilar_: Yet ... yet is it not a toy. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: We rarely play with love. - -_Sister Pilar_: No. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: No. - -_Sister Pilar_: I would fain learn more of this knight. He loves my -sister? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Ah! yes. His soul snatched the torch of love from -his body, then gave it back again, then again snatched it. She is all -twined round with his dreams; she smiles at him with his mother’s eyes; -she is Belerma the Fair and Doña Alda of his childhood’s ballads. She -is a fair ship charged with spices, she is all the flowers that have -blossomed since the Third Day of the Creation, she is the bread not made -with wheat, she ... she ... she is a key, like this one (_holding up the -key_), but wrought in silver and ivory. - -_Sister Pilar_: A key? Strange! (_smiling a little_). And what is he to -her? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: He to her? I know not ... perhaps also a key. - - (_Pause._) - -_Sister Pilar_: So you know my home? You have heard our slaves crooning -Moorish melodies from their quarters on moonlight nights, perchance you -have handled my father’s chessmen and the Portuguese pennon he won from a -French count at Tables ... oh! he was so proud of that pennon! How is the -Cid? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: The Cid? His bones still moulder in Cardeña. - -_Sister Pilar_: No, no, my father’s greyhound ... the one that has one -eye blue and the other brown. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Ah! He still sleeps by day and bays at the moon o’ -nights. - -_Sister Pilar_: Oh! And how tall has my oak grown now? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Your oak? - -_Sister Pilar_: Ah, surely they cannot have forgot to show it you! It -was the height of a daffodil when I took the veil. When we were children, -you know, we were told an _exemplum_ of a wise Moor who planted trees -that under their shade his children’s children might call him blessed, so -we—Sancho and Rodrigo and little Violante and me—we took acorns from the -pigs’ trough and planted them beyond the orchard, near my mother’s bed of -gillyflowers, and mine was the only one that sent forth shoots. Oh! And -the bush of Granada roses ... they must have shown you _them_? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: To be sure! They are still fragrant. - -_Sister Pilar_: You know, they were planted from seeds my grandsire got -in the Alhambra when he was jousting in Granada. My father was wont to -call them his harem of Moorish beauties, and there was a nightingale that -would serenade them every evening from the Judas tree that shadows them. -It was always to them he sang, he cared not a jot for the other roses in -the garden. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: The rose-tree died of blight and the nightingale of -a broken heart the year you took the veil. - -_Sister Pilar_: You are jesting! - - _He smiles, and she gives a little smile back at him._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: And so it is of roses and nightingales that you -ask tidings, and not of mother and father or brothers! Well, it is -always thus with exiles. When I have lain fevered with my wounds very -far from Old Castille, it has been for the river that flows at the foot -of our orchard I have yearned, or for the green _Vega_ dotted with brown -villages and stretching away towards the _Sierra_. - -_Sister Pilar_: I am not an exile. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: An exile is one who is far from home. - -_Sister Pilar_: This is my home. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: And do you never yearn for your other one? - -_Sister Pilar_: My _other_ one? Ah, yes! - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: By that you mean Paradise? - -_Sister Pilar_: Yes. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: And so you long for Paradise? - -_Sister Pilar_: With a great longing. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: I sometimes _dream_ of Paradise. - -_Sister Pilar_: And how does it show in your dreams? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_smiling a little_): I fear it is mightily like -what the _trovares_—_not_ the monks—tell us of hell. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_severely_): Then it must be a dream sent you by a fiend -of the Moorish Paradise, which is indeed hell. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: That may be. And how does it show in _your_ dreams? - -_Sister Pilar_: A great, cool, columned, empty hall, and I feel at once -small and vast and shod with the wind. And all the while I am aware that -the coolness and vastness and spaciousness of the hall and my body’s -lightness is because there is no sin. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: But what can you know of sin in a nunnery? - - _SISTER PILAR looks at him suspiciously, but his expression - remains impenetrable._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Well? - -_Sister Pilar_: You must know ... ’tis the scandal of Christendom ... -the empty vows of the religious. Yet when all’s said, ’tis better here -than out in the world; we _do_ live under rule, and mark the day by -singing the Hours (_gazing in front of her as if at some vision_). Just -over there, perhaps across that hill, or round that bend of the road, -a cool, rain-washed world, trees, oxen, men, women, children, thin and -transparent, as if made of crystal.... I always held I would suddenly -come upon it. (_Passionately_) Oh, I am so weary of the glare and dust of -sin! Everything is heavy and savourless and confined. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Always? - -_Sister Pilar_: Yes ... except when I eat Christ in the Eucharist. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: And then? - -_Sister Pilar_: Then there is vastness and peace. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: That must be a nun’s communion. When I eat Our -Lord I am filled with a great pity for His sufferings on Calvary which -the Mass commemorates. There have been times when having eaten Him on -the field of battle, my comrades and I, the tears have rained down our -cheeks, and from our pity has sprung an exceeding great rage against the -infidel dogs who deny His divinity, and in that day’s battle it goes -ill with them. And when I eat Him in times of peace, I am filled with a -longing to fall upon the Morería, a sword in one hand, a burning brand in -the other. - - (_Pause._) - -_Sister Pilar_: It is already very late ... for nuns. What is the weighty -news you bring me? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Why, the marriage of your sister Violante! - -_Sister Pilar_ (_coldly_): And was it for that I was dragged from the -dorter? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: I had sworn to acquaint you with the news ... and -to-morrow I leave Seville. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_relenting_): And you are well acquainted with Don Manuel -de Lara? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_gives a start_): Don Manuel de Lara? Ah, yes ... -we are of the same country and the same age. We were suckled by one -foster-mother, we yawned over one Latin primer, and gloated over the same -tales of chivalry. We learned to ride the same horse, to fly the same -hawk; we were dubbed knight by the same stroke of the sword—we love the -same lady. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_amazed_): _You_ love my sister Violante? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes, I love your sister Violante ... and your -mother that carried you in her womb, and your father that begat you. -(_Violently_) By the rood, I am sick of mummery! _I_ am Don Manuel de -Lara. - -_Sister Pilar_: You? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes, I—— - -_Sister Pilar_: Then you are not the son of my father’s cousin? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: No. - -_Sister Pilar_: I ... I am all dumbfounded ... I ... - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: I will make it clear. On Tuesday night I heard your -talk with Sister Assumcion. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_in horror_): Oh!... - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: I was the man behind the wall whom you justly named -the worst kind of would-be adulterer, and.... - -_Sister Pilar_: I have no further words for Sister Assumcion’s lover. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: _I_ am not Sister Assumcion’s lover. The moon has -already set and risen, the sun risen and set on his dead body. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_haughtily_): I am not an old peasant woman that you -should seek to please me with riddles. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: I will read you the riddle. Some weeks ago I had -business—sent from the Alcazar on a matter pertaining to some herbs—with -that old hag Trotaconventos. And through what motive I cannot say, she -waxed exceeding eloquent on the charms of Sister Assumcion. We are taught -in the Catechism that the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears, are gates -by which either fiends or angels may enter.... Well, her words entered -my ears and set fire to a great, dry heap of old dreams, old memories, -old hopes ... (strange! these are the _trovar’s_ words!) piled high on -my heart. I became a flame.... You are of the South, you have never seen -a fire consuming a sun-parched _vega_ in the North. Well, a fire must -work its will, and, devouring all that blocks its path—flowers, towers, -men—drive forward to its secret bourne. Who knows the bourne of fire? I -obtained speech with Sister Assumcion; it takes many waters to quench -a great fire, but the wind can alter its course. I heard a voice and -strange, passionate words ... the course of the fire was altered, but -still it drives on, still it consumes. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_in a small, cold voice_): Well? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Well? And is it well? My God! Well, a _trovar_ from -France who had entered your convent disguised as a friar obtained from -Trotaconventos this key, which I likewise desired, first because it opens -this postern, secondly because ... toys are apt to take for me a vast -significance and swell out with all the potencies of my happiness in this -world, my salvation in the next, and thus it happened with this key; the -fire rushed on, I killed the _trovar_ and took the key! - -_Sister Pilar_ (_horror-stricken_): You _killed_ him? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes ... and would have killed a thousand such for -the key ... a low, French _jongleur_! The world is all the better for his -loss. The dog! Daring to think he could seduce the nuns of Spain! - -_Sister Pilar_: Well? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: The rest is told in few words. My madness over -(for that night I was mad) the key in my hands, counsel returned to me, -and showed me that it was not only through the key I could win to your -convent ... it is dreams that open only to this key; strange dreams I -only know in fragments ... and I minded me of an _exemplum_ told by the -king Don Sancho, in his book, of a knight that craved to talk with a nun, -and to affect the same, feigned to be her kinsman. The night I was the -other side this wall and you were taunting Sister Assumcion, you named -yourself a Guzman whose mother was a Perez. I had but to go to a herald -and learn from him all the particulars pertaining to the family of Perez -y Guzman. - -_Sister Pilar_: You wished to have speech with me? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes. - -_Sister Pilar_: Why? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: I have already said that no one knows the bourne of -fire. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_scornfully_): The bourne of fire! The bourne rather of -... I’ll not soil my lips with the word. Let me reduce your “fires,” -and “lyres,” and “moons” to plain, cold words; having wearied of Sister -Assumcion, you thought you’d sample another nun—one maybe taking a -greater stretch of arm to reach; like children with figs—a bite out of -one, then flung away, then scrambling for another on a higher branch, -that in its turn it, too, may be bitten and thrown. Or, maybe, Sister -Assumcion found the _trovar_ more to her taste than you ... yes, I have -it! _I_ am to bring a little balm to Sister Assumcion’s discarded lover! - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_eagerly_): Oh, lady, very light of ... lady, it is -not so. Maybe thus it shows, but in your heart of hearts you know right -well it is not so. I am a grievous sinner, but my soul is not light nor -is my heart shallow ... and I think already you know ’tis so. Listen; I -could have continued feigning to be your kinsman and thus I could have -come again to speak with you, and all would have gone well; but your -presence gave me a loathing of my deceit, so I stripped me of my lies -and stand naked at your mercy. As to Sister Assumcion ... the old hag’s -words, when she spoke of her, mated with my dreams and engendered _you_ -in my heart, yes, _you_; and I had but to hear the other’s voice and -hearken to her words to know that I had been duped and that she was not -you. I swear by God Almighty, by the duty I owe to my liege-lord, by my -order of chivalry, that I speak the truth. - -_Sister Pilar_: Well, suppose it true, what then? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: What then? I have burned my boats and I shall go -... where? And you will to your dorter and be summoned by the cock to -matins, and it will all be as a dream (_in a voice of agony_). No! No! -By all the height and depth of God’s mercy it cannot be thus! The stars -have never said that of all men I should be the most miserable. Can you -see no pattern traced behind all this? Sin? Aye, sin.... But I verily -believe that God loves sinners. But why do I speak of sin? You say sin -is everywhere; tell me, do you see sin’s shadow lying between us two -to-night? Speak! You do not answer. Who knows? It may be that for the -first time we have stumbled on the track that leads to Paradise. Angels -are abroad ... fiends, too, it may be ... but I am not a light man. _Ex -utero ante luciferum amavi te_ ... ’tis not thus the words run, but they -came. - -_Sister Pilar_: You speak wildly. What do you want of me? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: What do I want?... _Magna opera Domini_ ... why -does the psalter run in my head?... Great are the works of the Lord ... -the sun is a great work, but so is shade from the sun; and the moon is -a great work, giving coolness and dreams, and air to breathe is a great -work, and so is water to lave our wounds and slake our throats ... I -believe all the works of the Lord are found in you.... I could ... oh, -God!... Where? Lady, remember I have the key, and every evening at -sundown I shall be here ... waiting. It is a vow. - - _SISTER PILAR slowly moves away._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Lady Maria! Lady Maria! - -_Sister Pilar_ (_stopping_): She is dead. Do you speak to Sister Pilar? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes, that is she, Sister Pilar. Listen: receive -absolution; communicate; be very instant in prayer; make deep obeisance -to the images of Our Lady. Say many Paters and Aves, and through the -watches of the night, pray for the dead. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_in a frightened voice_): For the dead? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Aye, the dead ... that defend virginity. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_very coldly_): All this has ever been my custom, as a -nun, without your admonition. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Good-night. - - (_Pause._) - -_Sister Pilar_ (_almost inaudibly_): Good-night. - - - - -ACT III - - -SCENE I - - _A week later. The Chapel of the Convent of San Miguel. SISTER - ASSUMCION kneels in the Confessional, where JAIME RODRIGUEZ is - receiving penitents._ - -_Sister Assumcion_: I ask your blessing, father. I confess to Almighty -God, and to you, father.... - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Well, daughter—Ten Commandments, Seven Deadly Sins. -What of the Second Commandment, which we break whensoever we follow after -vanities? - -_Sister Assumcion_: Yes, father. I have not foregone blackening my eyes -with kohl ... and I have procured me a crimson scarf the dye of which -comes off on the lips ... and ... the pittance I got at Easter I have -expended upon perfumes. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Ever the same tale, daughter! As I have told you many -a time before, civet and musk make the angels hold their noses, as though -they were passing an open grave, and a painted woman makes them turn -aside their eyes; but ’tis God Himself that turns away His eyes when the -painted woman is a nun. The Second Commandment is ever a stumbling-block -to you, daughter, and so is the Sixth, for in God’s sight he who commits -the deadly sin of Rage breaks that commandment; admit, daughter! - -_Sister Assumcion_: Yes, father; during the singing of None, I did loudly -rate Sister Ines and boxed her ears. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Shame on you, daughter! Why did you thus? - -_Sister Assumcion_: Because she had spewed out on my seat the sage she -had been chewing to clean her teeth after dinner, and, unwittingly, I sat -on it. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: And do you not know that a stained habit is less -ungracious in the eyes of God than a soul stained with rage against a -sister and with irreverence of His holy service? - -_Sister Assumcion_: Yes, father. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Well, for your concupiscence, rage, and -unmannerliness: seven penitential psalms with the Litany on Fridays, -and a fare of bread and water on the Fridays of this month. There still -remains the Tenth Commandment and the deadly sin of Envy; I mind me in -the past you have been guilty of Envy ... towards more virtuous and -richer sisters. - - _Silence._ - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_sternly_): Daughter, admit! - -_Sister Assumcion_: Father, I.... - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Daughter, admit! - -_Sister Assumcion_: It may be ... a little ... Sister Pilar. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Aha! Envious of Sister Pilar! And wherein did you envy -her? - - _Silence._ - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Daughter, admit! - -_Sister Assumcion_: I have envied her, father, but ... the matter touches -her more than me. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: You have envied her. Envy is a deadly sin; if I’m to -give you Absolution I must know more of the matter. - -_Sister Assumcion_: I have envied her in that ... well, in that she was -a Guzman ... and ... and has a room to herself, and a handsome dowry.... - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Doubtless you envy her for these things; but ... -I seem to detect a particular behind these generals. Touching what -particular matter during these past days have you envied Sister Pilar? - - _Silence._ - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Daughter, admit! - -_Sister Assumcion_: Oh, father ... ’tis she that is involved ... I.... - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Daughter, admit! - -_Sister Assumcion_: There was a man ... it was Trotaconventos ... all he -asked was a few words with me, no more ... nothing ... nothing unseemly -passed between us ... and then he flouted me ... and then he came bearing -a letter and saying he was a kinsman of Sister Pilar. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Come, daughter, your confession is like a peasant’s -tale—it begins in the middle and has no end. Why should you envy Sister -Pilar this kinship? - - _Silence._ - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Daughter, it is a dire and awful thing to keep back -aught in the Confessional; admit. - -_Sister Assumcion_: He was not her kinsman, as it happens, and ... even -had he been.... - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_eagerly_): Well? - -_Sister Assumcion_: Father ... pray.... - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: I begin to understand; your foolish, vain, envious -heart was sore that this knight treated you coldly, and you have dared to -dream that that most virtuous and holy lady, Sister Pilar.... - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_hotly_): Dreaming? Had you been in the orchard last -evening, and seen what I saw, you would not speak of dreaming! - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_breathlessly_): What did you see? - - _Silence._ - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: You have gone too far, daughter, to turn back now. I -must hear all. - -_Sister Assumcion_: Well, last evening, just before Compline, I went -down to the orchard to breathe the cool air; and there I came upon -Sister Pilar and this knight; but they were so deep in talk they did not -perceive me, so I hid behind a tree and listened. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Well? - -_Sister Assumcion_: Well, he is, I think, clean mad, and she, too, is -of a most fantastical conceit; and sometimes their words seemed empty -of all sense and meaning, but sometimes it was as clear as day—little -loving harping upon foolishness and little tricks of speech or manner, -as it might be a country lad and lass wooing at a saints’ shrine: “there -again!” “what?” “You burred your R like a child whose mouth is full of -chestnuts.” “Nay, I did not!” “Why, yes, I say you did!” And then a great -silence fell on them, she with her eyes downcast, he devouring her with -his, and the air seemed too heavy for them even to draw their breath; -then up she started, and trembled from head to foot, and fled to the -house. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: But ... but ... yes; thank you, daughter ... I mean, -six paters daily for a fortnight. (_Gabbles mechanically_): Dominus -noster Jesus Christus te absolvat: et ego auctoritate ipsius te absolvo -ab omni vinculo excommunicationis et interdicti in quantum possum, et tu -indiges. Deinde ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris, et -Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. - - _SISTER ASSUMCION crosses herself, rises and leaves the - Confessional. After a few seconds, SISTER PILAR enters it._ - -_Sister Pilar_: I ask your blessing, father. I confess to Almighty God, -and to you, father.... - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Well? - -_Sister Pilar_: I unwittingly omitted the _dipsalma_ between two verses -in choir, father. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Yes, yes ... what else? - -_Sister Pilar_: Last Sunday I chewed the Host with my back teeth instead -of with my front. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Yes, yes, yes; small sins of omission and negligence -... what else? - -_Sister Pilar_: That is all, father. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: All you have to confess? - -_Sister Pilar_: All, father. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: But ... but ... this is ... daughter, you _dare_ to -come to me with a Saint’s confession? Bethink you of your week’s ride, -ten stone walls to be cleared clean, seven pits from which to keep your -horse’s hoofs ... not one of the Ten Commandments broken, daughter? Not -one of the Seven Deadly Sins upon your conscience? - -_Sister Pilar_: No, father. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: But ... beware ... most solemnly do I conjure you to -beware of withholding aught in the Confessional. - - _Silence._ - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Well, I shall question you. On what have you meditated -by day? - -_Sister Pilar_: On many things; all lovely. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Of what have you dreamed o’ nights? - -_Sister Pilar_: Of godly matters, cool cathedrals, and Jacob’s ladder. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Of man? - - _Silence._ - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_threateningly_): Daughter! Admit! - -_Sister Pilar_: Sometimes ... I ... have dreamed of man. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Of _a_ man? - -_Sister Pilar_: Of a monk dwelling in the same community who has -sometimes knelt at the altar by my side to receive the Lord. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: But this is not a mixed community. - -_Sister Pilar_: No, father. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: What of this monk, then? - -_Sister Pilar_: You asked me, father, of my dreams. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: And had this monk of dreams the features of a living -man? - -_Sister Pilar_: Yes, father. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_hoarsely_): Whose? - -_Sister Pilar_: Sometimes they were the features of my father ... one -night of an old Basque gardener we had in my home when I was a child. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Pooh! Daughter, you are holding something back.... -Beware! What of your allegory of the little stone the giant could not -move? - -_Sister Pilar_: I have confessed _all my sins_. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Daughter, I refuse to give you Absolution. - - _SISTER PILAR crosses herself, rises, and goes out of the - chapel. JAIME RODRIGUEZ leaves the confessional looking pale - and tormented; he is accosted by TROTACONVENTOS, who has been - sitting waiting._ - -_Trotaconventos_: A word with you, Don Jaime. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Anon, anon, good dame. I have pressing business in the -town. - -_Trotaconventos_: Your business can wait, but not my words. They touch -Sister Pilar. (_He starts violently and looks at her expectantly._) You -see, you will not to your business till I am done with you ... just one -little word to bind you to my will! And in that I ever know the little -word that will make men hurrying to church or market stand still as you -are doing now, or else if they be standing still to run like zebras: they -call me a witch. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Yes, yes, but you said you had ... a word ... touching -... for my ear. - -_Trotaconventos_: And so I have, Don Jaime; I am making my soul. A hard -job, your eyes say. Well, with my brushes and ointments I can make the -complexion of a brown witch as fair as a lily, I can make an old face -slough its wrinkles like a snake its skin in spring; and who knows what -true penitence will not do to my soul? - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Good dame, I beseech you, to business! - -_Trotaconventos_: And is not the saving of my soul business, if you -please? - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Yes, your confessor’s ... in truth, dame, I am much -pressed for time. - -_Trotaconventos_: And yet, though time, or the lack of him, expresses all -the marrow from your bones, because of that little name you cannot move -till I have said my say. Is it true that St. Mary Magdalene was once a -bawd and a maker of cosmetics? - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_with weary resignation_): Aye. - -_Trotaconventos_: And did you ever hear that she sold her daughter to a -Jew, and that daughter a nun? - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_in horror_): Never! - -_Trotaconventos_: But if she had, would her tears of penitence have -washed it out? - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Yes, if she had confessed it and done penance. - -_Trotaconventos_: And what is more, become herself a scourge of sinners -and saved the souls of two innocent babes for the Church? - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: Yes, thus would she have acquired merit. - -_Trotaconventos_: Well, I have brought as many maids to bed that -multiplied by ten you will have baptised and buried when you are three -score years and ten.... Why! it is no more to me than it was to my old -father, who owned some land Carmona way, to take a heifer to bull. In -truth, if Don Love still reigned in heaven and had not fallen with -Satan into hell, your children’s children would be praying to _Saint_ -Trotaconventos that she would send them kisses and ribbons and moonless -nights; my bones would be lying under the altar of some parish church, -and two of my teeth in a fine golden reliquary would cure maids of -pimples, lads of warts. All that lies very lightly on my soul ... -but there are other things ... and ... (_looking round furtively_) -these nights I’ve sometimes wished for a dog that I might hear his -snore.... What if before she died Trotaconventos should be re-christened -Convent-Scourge? I have learned ... oh, one of my trade needs must -have as many eyes as the cow-herd of the Roman dame, I forget what the -_trovares_ call her, and as many ears as eyes ... that a certain nun of -this convent ... you grow restive? Why, then, once more I must whisper -the magic name and root you to the ground. _Sister Pilar_ is deep in an -_amour_ with a knight of the Court ... an overbearing, vain, foolish man -against whom I bear a grudge. And Trotaconventos means, before she dies, -on one nun at least in place of opening, to shut the convent gate; nay, -to bring her to her knees and penitence. Well, what think you? - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: There is some dark thought brooding in your heart, -and, unlike the crow, I deem it will hatch out acts black as itself,[4] -but the whiteness of her virtue will not be soiled. - -_Trotaconventos_: And is Sister Pilar too firmly settled in her niche to -topple down? Yet how she laughs at you! Why, I have heard her say that -you are neither man nor priest, but just a bundle of hay dressed up in -a soutane, whose head is a hollow pumpkin holding a burning candle, to -frighten boors and children with death and judgment on the eve of All -Souls. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_hotly_): She said that? When? - -_Trotaconventos_: Why, I cannot mind me of the date; she has used you -so often as a strop for sharpening her tongue. But let me unfold my -plan. Maybe you know I am ever in and out of the Alcazar with draughts -and oils and unguents ... and other toys that shall be nameless ... for -Doña Maria. Poor soul! The fiends torment her, too, and she clutches -at aught that may serve as atonement. I told her the story, and she -was all agog to be the instrument for restoring the good name to the -convents of Seville. She thanked me kindly for my communication, and -sent her _camarero_ to fetch me a roll of Malaga silk, and then she went -to Don Pedro feigning ignorance of the knight’s name—for, next to his -carbuncle, Don Pedro puts his faith in the strong right arm of Don Manuel -de Lara—told him the tale, and wheedled from him a writ signed with the -royal seal, the name to be filled in when she had learned it, for he -is very jealous of the right which it seems alone among the Kings of -Christendom is his—to punish infringements of canon, as well as of civil -law. I have the writ, and towards sundown I shall come to the convent -orchard with three alguaciles[5] to tear the canting Judas from his -lady’s arms. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_in horror_): Her arms? Nay, not that.... - -_Trotaconventos_: Why, yes; her arms and lips. Come, come, Sir Priest, -think you it is with the feet and nose lovers embrace? - - _JAIME RODRIGUEZ continues to gaze at her in horror._ - -_Trotaconventos_ (_chuckling_): Oh, well I know the clerks of your -kidney! Your talk would bring a blush to a bawd, and you’ll hold your -sides and smack your lips over French fables and the like; but when it -comes to flesh and hot blood and _doing_, you’ll draw down your upper -lip, turn up your eyes, and cry, “But it’s not true. It cannot be!” Come, -pull yourself together—’tis you must be the fowler of the nun. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_starting_): I? - -_Trotaconventos_: You. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_: But the discipline of nuns lies with the Chapter. - -_Trotaconventos_: Yes, yes, but, ’tis the common talk of Seville that -the Prioress here is too busy with little hounds and apes and flutings -and silk veils to care for discipline ... you’ll not get her wetting -her slashed shoes in the orchard dew. You, the chaplain of this house, -must meet me to-night outside the orchard’s postern to catch the nun -red-handed and drag her before the Prioress.... Ah! to-night you’ll see -whether it be only in songs and tales and little lewd painted pictures -that folks know how to kiss! - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_violently_): I’ll not be there! - -_Trotaconventos_: Not there? Why, Sister Pilar spoke truly: “neither man -nor priest”—not man enough to take vengeance on his spurner, not priest -enough to chastise a sinner. - -_Jaime Rodriguez_ (_in a fury of despair_): Ah! I will be there. - - _He rushes from the chapel. TROTACONVENTOS looks after him, a - slow smile spreading over her face, and she nods her head with - satisfaction. Enter SISTER ASSUMCION._ - -_Trotaconventos_: Aha! my little pigeon, how goes the world? Has my -lotion cured that little roughness on your cheek? Come, my beauty, let -me feel (_she draws her hand down her cheek_). Why, yes, it’s as smooth -and satiny as a queen-apple (_makes a scornful exclamation_). And so that -lantern-jawed Knight prefers Sister Whey to Sister Cream! Well, he’ll get -well churned for his pains. Oh, the nasty Templar come to life ... oh, -the pompous fool, marching with solemn gait like a lord abbot frowning -over a great paunch because, forsooth, he has swallowed the moon and she -has dissolved into humours in his belly! Oh ... oh ... with “good dame, -do this,” and “good dame, do that,” as though I were his slave ... ’tis -sweet when duty and vengeance chime together. (_Looking maliciously at -Sister Assumcion._) Spurned, too, by the pretty French _trovar_! Why, it -is indeed a deserted damsel! Oh, you needn’t blush and toss your head; -when I was of your age and your complexion, I could land a fish as well -as throw a line. (_Melting._) Never mind, poor poppet, you were wise in -that you came to me with your tale of Don Joseph and my lady Susannah for -once caught napping ... and that in each other’s arms. I have devised a -pretty vengeance which I will unfold to you. Aye! you’ll see that proud -white Guzman without her black veil, last in choir for the rest of her -days, and every week going barefoot round the cloister while the Prioress -drubs her! And the sallow knight who thought my cream had turned when it -was but his own sour stomach ... he’ll have to sell his Moorish loot to -buy waxen tapers, and be beaten round all the churches of Seville ... may -I live to see the day! Never was there a sweeter medicine whereby to save -one’s soul, than vengeance on one’s foes. (_She pauses for a few seconds, -and a strange light comes into her eyes._) Don Juan Tenorio, I have made -my choice—I fight with the dead. (_shakes her fist at the audience_) -Arrogant, flaunting youth! Beauty! Hot blood! From the brink of the grave -Trotaconventos threatens you. - - -SCENE II - - _The evening of the same day. The convent orchard. SISTER PILAR - and DON MANUEL DE LARA are lying locked in each other’s arms. - She extricates herself and sits up._ - -_Sister Pilar_ (_very slowly_): You ... have ... ravished ... me. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_triumphantly_): Yes, eyes of my heart; I have -unlocked your sweet body. - - (_Pause._) - -_Sister Pilar_: Strange! Has my prayer been answered? And by whom? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: What prayer, beloved? - -_Sister Pilar_: That night you were the other side of the wall, I prayed -that I might behold the woof without the warp of sin, a still, quiet, -awful world, and all the winds asleep. (_Very low._) IT was like that. -(_Springing to her feet._) Christ Jesus! Blessed Virgin! Guardian angel, -where was your sword? I, a nun, a bride of Christ, I have been ravished. -I am fallen lower than the lowest woman of the town, I have forfeited my -immortal soul. (_Sobbing, she sinks down again beside DON MANUEL, and -lays her head on his shoulder._) Beloved! Why have you brought me to -this? Why, my beloved? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_caressing her_): Hush, little love, hush! Your -body is small and thin ... hush! - -_Sister Pilar_: But how came it to fall out thus? Why? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Because there was something stronger than the -angels, than all the hosts of the dead. - -_Sister Pilar_: What? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: I cannot say ... something ... I feel it—yet, -where are these words? They have suddenly come to me: _amor morte -fortior_—against love the dead whose aid you, and I, too, invoked, cannot -prevail. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_shuddering_): Yet the dead kept Sister Assumcion from -her _trovar_. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Their souls were barques too light to be freighted -with love; for it is very heavy. - -_Sister Pilar_: And so they did not sink. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Who can tell if lightness of soul be not the -greatest sin of all? And as to us ... the proverb says the paths that -lead to God are infinite ... beloved, I feel.... Something holy is with -us to-day. - -_Sister Pilar_: Fiends, fiends, wearing the weeds of angels.... -(_Groans._) - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Rest, small love ... there, I’ll put my cloak for -your head. Why is your body so thin and small? - -_Sister Pilar_ (_her eyes fixed in horror_): I cannot believe that it is -really so. A week since, yesterday, an hour since, I ... was ... a ... a -... virgin, and now ... can God wipe out the past? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Nay ... nor would I have Him do so. - -_Sister Pilar_: Beloved ... we have sinned ... most grievously. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: What is sin? I would seem to have forgotten. What -is sin, beloved? Be my herald and read me his arms. - -_Sister Pilar_: Death ... I have said that before ... ah, yes, to the -_trovar_ ... death, death.... - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: With us is neither sin nor death. You yourself said -that during IT sin vanished. - -_Sister Pilar_: Yes ... so it seemed ... (_almost inaudibly_) ’twas what -I feel, only ten times multiplied, when I eat Christ in the Eucharist. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Hush, beloved, hush! You are speaking wildly. - -_Sister Pilar_: Oh! what did I say? Yes, they were wild words. - - (_Pause._) - -_Sister Pilar_: Do you know, we are in the octave of the Feast of Corpus -Christi? I seem to have fallen from the wheel of the Calendar to which -I have been tied all my life ... saints, apostles, virgins, martyrs, -rolled round, rolled round, year after year ... like the Kings and -Popes and beggars on the Wheel of Fortune in my mother’s book of Hours. -Yes, beloved, we have fallen off the wheel and are lying stunned in its -shadow among the nettles and deadly night-shade; but above us, creaking, -creaking, the old wheel turns. It may be we are dead ... are we dead, -beloved? - - _Through the trees SISTER ASSUMCION is heard shouting, “Sister - Pilar! Sister Pilar!” SISTER PILAR starts violently and once - more springs to her feet. SISTER ASSUMCION appears running - towards them._ - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_breathlessly_): Quick! Quick! Not a moment ... -they’ll be here! I cannot ... quick! (_She presses her hand to her side -in great agitation_). - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: What is all this? Speak, lady. - -_Sister Assumcion_: Trotaconventos ... Don Jaime ... the _alguaciles_. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Take your time, lady. When you have recovered your -breath you will tell us what all this portends. - -_Sister Assumcion_: Away! Away! Trotaconventos has been to Don Pedro ... -she has a writ against you ... the _alguaciles_ will take you to prison -... and Don Jaime comes to catch Sister Pilar ... fly! fly! ere ’tis too -late. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_dully_): Caught up again on the wheel ... death’s wheel, -and it will crush us. - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_shaking her_): Rouse yourself, sister! You yet have -time. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: We are together, beloved ... do you fear? - -_Sister Pilar_: No ... I neither fear, nor hope, nor breathe. - -_Sister Assumcion_: Mad, both of them! I tell you, they come with the -_alguaciles_. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: And if they came with all the hosts of Christendom -and Barbary, yet should you see what you will see. I have a key, and I -could lock the postern, but I’ll not do so. (_He picks up his sword, -girds it on, and draws it._) Why ... all the Spring flows in my veins -to-day.... I am the Spring. What man can fight the Spring? - - _Sound of voices and hurrying steps outside the postern. - TROTACONVENTOS, JAIME RODRIGUEZ, and three alguaciles come - rushing in. SISTER ASSUMCION shrieks._ - -_Trotaconventos_: There, my brave lads, I told you! Caught in the act ... -the new Don Juan Tenorio and his veiled concubine! - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Silence, you filthy, bawdy hag! (_glares at her._) -Here stand I, Don Manuel de Lara, and here stands a very noble lady of -Spain and a bride of Christ, and here is my sword. Who will lay hands on -us? You, Don Priest, pallid and gibbering? You, vile old woman, whose -rotten bones need but a touch to crumble to dust and free your black soul -for hell? You ... (_his eyes rest on the alguaciles_). Why! By the rood -... ’tis Sancho and Domingo and Pedro! Old comrades, you and I, beneath -the rain of heaven and of Moorish arrows have buried our dead; we have -sat by the camp-fire thrumming our lutes or capping riddles (_laughs_). -How does it go? “I am both hot and cold, and fish swim in me without my -being a river,” and the answer is a frying-pan ... and in the cold dawn -of battle we have kneeled side by side and eaten God’s Body. - - _The alguaciles smile sheepishly and stand shuffling their - feet._ - -_Trotaconventos_: At him! At him, good lads! What is his sword to your -three knives and cudgels? Remember, you carry a warrant with Don Pedro’s -seal. - -_Sancho_ (_dubiously_): ’Tis true, captain, we carry a royal warrant for -your apprehension. - -_Trotaconventos_: At him! At him! - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: At me then! Air! Fire! Water! A million million -banners of green leaves! A mighty army of all the lovers who have ever -loved! Come, then, and fight them in me! _You_, too, were there that day -when the whole army saw the awful ærial warrior before whom the Moors -melted like snow ... what earthly arrows could pierce his star-forged -mail? I, too, have been a journey to the stars. I wait! At me! - - _The alguaciles stand as if hypnotised._ - -_Trotaconventos_: Rouse yourselves, you fools! Oh, he’s a wonder with his -stars and his leaves. Why, on his own showing, he is but a tumbler at a -fair in a suit of motley covered with spangles, or a Jack-in-the-green at -a village May-day. Come to your senses, good fellows; we can’t stay here -all night. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Sancho, hand me that warrant. - -_Trotaconventos_: No! No! You fool! - - _Without a word SANCHO hands the warrant to DON MANUEL, who - reads it carefully through._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Sir Priest! I see you carry quill and ink-horn.... -I fain would borrow them of you. - -_Trotaconventos_: No! No! Do not trust him, Don Jaime. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_impatiently_): Come, Sir Priest. - - _JAIME RODRIGUEZ obeys him in silence. DON MANUEL makes an - erasure in the warrant and writes in words in its place._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_handing the warrant to Sancho_): There, Sancho, I -have made a little change ... you’ll not go home with an empty bag, after -all. (_Pointing to Jaime Rodriguez._) There stands your quarry, looking -like a sleep-walker ... to gaol with him ... until his arch-priest gets -him out ... ’twill make a good fable, “which tells of a Prying Clerk and -how he cut himself on his own sharpness.” - - _The alguaciles, chuckling, seize JAIME RODRIGUEZ and bind him, - he staring all the time as if in a dream._ - -_Trotaconventos_ (_stamping_): You fools! You fools! And _you_ (_turning -to DON MANUEL_) ... you’ll lose your frenzied head for tampering with Don -Pedro’s seal. - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Nay, I’d not lose it if I tampered with his -carbuncle ... he is menaced by shadows and I fight them for him. Nor, -on my honour as a Knight, shall one hair of the head of Sancho and -Pedro and Domingo there suffer for this. But _you_ ... you heap of dung -outside the city’s wall, you stench of dogs’ corpses, devastating plague -... _you_ shall die ... not by my sword, however (_draws his dagger and -stabs Trotaconventos_). Away with her and your other quarry, Sancho ... -good-day, old comrades ... here’s to drink my health (_throws them a -purse_). - - _SANCHO and PEDRO lift up the dying TROTACONVENTOS, DOMINGO - leads off JAIME RODRIGUEZ and exeunt. SISTER PILAR stands - motionless, pale, and wide-eyed, SISTER ASSUMCION has collapsed - sobbing with terror on the ground. DON MANUEL DE LARA stands - for a few moments motionless, then quietly walks to the - postern and locks it with the key, returns, and again stands - motionless; then suddenly his eyes blaze and he throws out his - arms._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_loudly and triumphantly_): His truth shall compass -thee with a shield: thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by the night. -For the arrow that flieth in the day, for the plague that walketh in the -darkness: for the assault of the evil one in the noon-day. A thousand -shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall -not come nigh thee. The dead, the dead ... they melted like snow before -the Spring ... my beloved! - - _Pause. Beyond the orchard wall there is heard the tinkling of - a bell, and a voice calling, “Make way for el Señor! Way for el - Señor!”_ - -_Sister Assumcion_ (_sobbing_): They are carrying the Host to -Trotaconventos. - - _All three kneel down and cross themselves. The sound of the - bell and the cry of “el Señor” grow fainter and fainter in - the distance; when it can be heard no more, they rise. SISTER - PILAR draws her hand over her eyes, then opens them, blinking a - little and gazing round as if bewildered._ - -_Sister Pilar_: Yes ... Corpus Christi ... and then Ascension ... and -then Pentecost ... round and round ... Hours ... el Señor wins in His -Octave.... Is He the living or the dead, Don Manuel? - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Beloved! What are you saying? - -_Sister Pilar_: What am I saying? Something has had a victory ... maybe -the dead ... but the victory is not to you. (_Her eyes softening as -she looks at him._) Beloved! (_makes a little movement as if shaking -something off_). First, I must finish my confession ... the one I made -this morning was sacrilege ... something had blinded me. They say that in -the Primitive Church the penitents confessed one to other, so will I. - - _She walks up to SISTER ASSUMCION, who is crouching under a - tree, her teeth chattering, and goes down on her knees before - her._ - -_Sister Pilar_: I confess to Almighty God, and to you, little sister, -because I have sinned against you exceedingly, in thought, word and -deed (_she strikes her breast three times_), through my fault, through -my fault, through my most grievous fault. You were wiser than I, little -sister, and knew me better than I knew myself. I deemed my soul to be -set on heavenly things, but therein was I grievously mistaken. When I -chid you for wantonness, thinking it was zeal for the honour of the -house, it was naught, as you most truly said, but envy of you, in that -you gave free rein to your tongue and your desires. And, though little -did I wot of it, I craved for the love of man as much as ever did you, -nay, more. Even that poor wretch, Don Jaime ... it was as if I came more -alive when I talked with him than when I was in frater or in dorter with -naught but women. Then that poor _trovar_ ... he gave me a longing for -the very things I did most condemn in talk with him ... the merry rout of -life, all noise and laughter and busyness and perfumed women. Then when -he gazed at you as does a prisoner set free gaze at the earth, my heart -seemed to contract, my blood to dry up, and I hated you. And then ... -and then ... there came Don Manuel, and time seemed to cease, eternity -to begin. All my far-flown dreams came crowding back to me like homing -birds; envy, rage, pride dropped suddenly dead, like winds in a great -calm at sea ... and that great calm was ... Lust. - - _DON MANUEL, who has been standing motionless, makes a movement - of protest._ - -_Sister Pilar_: Yes ... Lust. Little sister, I verily believe that in -spite of foolishness and vanity, all the sins of this community are -venial ... excepting mine. For I am Christ’s adulteress (_DON MANUEL -starts forward with a stifled cry, but she checks him with upraised -hand_), a thing that Jezebel would have the right to spurn with her -foot ... yes, little sister, I, a bride of Christ, have been ravished. -(_Seizing her hands._) Poor little sister ... just a wild bird beating -its wings against a cage through venial longings for air and sun! I am -not worthy to loose the latchet of your shoe. - - _SISTER ASSUMCION, who up to now has been crying softly, at - this point bursts into violent sobs._ - -_Sister Assumcion_: Oh ... Sister ... ’tis I ... I envied you first your -fine furniture and sheets and ... things ... and then the knight there -... spurning me for you ... and I told Trotaconventos ... and Don Jaime -... and it is all my doing ... and ’tis I that crave forgiveness. - -_Sister Pilar_: Hush, little sister, hush! (_Strokes her hands._) Sit -quiet a little while and rest ... you have been sadly shaken. - - _Rises and silently confronts DON MANUEL DE LARA._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: And what have you to say to me—my beloved? - -_Sister Pilar_: Only that I fear my little sister and I are late for -Vespers. - - _He falls on his knees and seizes the hem of her habit._ - -_Don Manuel de Lara_: Oh, very soul of my soul! White heart of hell -wherein I must burn for all eternity! I see it now ... we have been -asleep and we have wakened ... or, maybe, we have been awake and now we -have fallen asleep. Look! look at the evening star caught in the white -blossom—the tree’s cold, virginal fruition (_springs to his feet_). -Vespers ... the Evening Star ... bells and stars and Hours, they are -leagued against me ... and yet I thought ... is it the living or the -dead? I cannot fight stars ... wheels ... the Host ... Beloved, will -you sometimes dream of me? No need to answer, because I know you will. -Our dreams ... God exacts no levy on our dreams ... the angels dare not -touch them ... they are ours. First, heavy penance, then, maybe, if I win -forgiveness, the white habit of St. Bruno. When you are singing Lauds, -Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, I, too, shall be singing -them—through the long years. God is merciful and the Church is the full -granery of His Grace ... maybe He will pardon us; but it will be for -_your_ soul that I shall pray, not mine. - -_Sister Pilar_ (_almost inaudibly_): And I for yours ... beloved. (_Turns -towards SISTER ASSUMCION_): Come, little sister. - - _They move slowly towards the Convent till they vanish among - the trees. DON MANUEL holds out the key in front of him for a - few seconds, gazing at it, then unlocks the postern, goes out - through it, shuts it, and one can hear him locking it at the - other side._ - - -SCENE III - - _The Convent chapel. The nuns seated in their stalls are - singing Vespers._ - -Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion. - -For He hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; he hath blessed thy -children within thee. - -Who hath made peace in thy borders: and filled thee with the fat of corn. - -Who sendeth forth His speech upon the earth: His word runneth very -swiftly. - - _SISTER PILAR, as white as death, and SISTER ASSUMCION, still - sobbing, enter and take their places._ - -Who giveth snow like wool: He scattereth mist like ashes. - -He sendeth His crystal like morsels: who shall stand before the face of -His cold? - -He shall send out His word and shall melt them: His wind shall blow, and -the waters shall run. - -Who declareth His word unto Jacob: His Justice and judgments unto Israel. - -He hath not done in like manner to every nation: and His judgement He -hath not made manifest to them. - -The Lord, who putteth peace on the borders of the Church, filleth us with -the fat of wheat. - -Brethren: For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered -unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was betrayed, -took bread, and giving thanks, broke, and said: “Take ye and eat: this is -my body, which shall be delivered for you: this do for the commemoration -of me.” - - _They sing_: - - Pange, lingua, gloriósi, - Córporis mystérium, - Sangúinisque pretiósi, - Quem in mundi prétium - Fructus ventris generósi - Rex effudit géntium. - - _During the singing of this hymn, SISTER PILAR leaves her place - in the choir and prostrates herself before the altar._ - - Nobis datus, nobis natus - Ex intacta virgine, - Et in mundo conversátus, - Sparso verbi sémine, - Sui moras incolátus - Miro clausit órdine. - - In suprémæ nocte coenæ - Recúmbens cum frátribus. - - _The curtain, when there is one, should at this point begin - slowly to fall._ - - Observáta lege plene - Cibis in legalibus - Cibum turbæ duodénæ - Se dat suis manibus. - -For a few seconds there was silence; and Teresa saw several ladies -exchanging amused, embarrassed glances. - -Then Harry could be heard saying, “Er ... er ... er ... a piece ... -er ... AMAZINGLY well adapted to its audience ... er ... er....” All -turned round in the direction of his voice, and some smiled. Then again -there was a little silence, till a gallant lady, evidently finding the -situation unbearable, came up to Teresa and said, “Thrilling, my dear, -thrilling! But I’m afraid in places it’s rather too deep for me.” - -Then others followed her example. “What _is_ an auto-sacramentál, -exactly?” “Oh, really! A knight of the time of Pedro the Cruel? I always -connected Don Juan ... or how is it one ought to pronounce it? Don Huan, -is it? I always connected him with the time of Byron, but I suppose that -was absurd.” “I liked the troubadour’s jolly red boots; are they what are -called Cossack boots? Oh, no, of course, that’s Russian.” - -But it was clear they were all horribly embarrassed. - -The babies and children had, for some time, been getting fretful; and now -the babies were giving their nerve-rending catcalls, the children their -heart-rending keening. - -In one of her moments of insight, Jollypot had said that there is nothing -that brings home to one so forcibly the suffering involved in merely -being alive as the change that takes place in the cry of a child between -its first and its fourth year. - -But the children were soon being comforted with buns; the babies with -great, veined, brown-nippled breasts, while Mrs. Moore, markedly avoiding -any member of the Lane family, moved about among her women with pursed -mouth. - -Then the actors appeared, still in their costumes, and mingled with the -other guests, drinking tea and chatting. The Doña, eyebrows quizzically -arched, came up to Teresa. - -“My dear child, what _were_ you thinking of? Just look at Mrs. Moore’s -face! That, of course, makes up for a lot ... but, still! And I do hope -they won’t think Spanish convents are like that nowadays.” - -Thank goodness! The Doña, at least, had not smelt a rat. - -Then she saw Guy coming towards her; for some reason or other, he looked -relieved. - -“I wish to God Haines would make his people stylisize their acting -more—make them talk in more artificial voices in that sort of play. They -ought to speak like the Shades in Homer; that would preserve the sense of -the Past. There’s nothing that can be so modern as a voice.” He looked -at her. “It’s funny ... you know, it’s not the sort of thing one would -have expected you to write. It has a certain gush and exuberance, but -it’s disgustingly pretty ... it really is, Teresa! Of course, one does -get thrills every now and then, but I’m not sure if they’re legitimate -ones—for instance, in the last scene but one, when Don Manuel becomes -identified with the Year-Spirit.” - -So _that_ was it! He had feared that, according to his own canons, it -would be much better than it was; hence his look of relief. She had a -sudden vision of what he had feared a thing written by her would be -like—something black and white, and slightly mathematical; dominoes, -perhaps, which, given that the simple rule is observed that like numbers -must be placed beside like, can follow as eccentric a course as the -players choose, now in a straight line, now zigzagging, now going off at -right angles, now again in a straight line; a sort of visible music. And, -indeed, that line of ivory deeply indentured with the strong, black dots -would be like the design, only stronger and clearer, made by an actual -page of music; like that in a portrait she had once seen by Degas of a -lady standing by a piano. - -But she felt genuinely glad that her play should have achieved this, at -least, that one person should feel happier because of it; and she was -quite sincere when she said, “Well, Guy, it’s an ill wind, you know.” - -He grew very red. “I haven’t the least idea what you mean,” he said -angrily. - -After that, Concha came up, and was very warm in her congratulations. -Did she guess? If she did, she would rather die than show that she did. -Teresa began to blush, and it struck her how amused Concha must be -feeling, if she _had_ guessed, at the collapse of Sister Assumcion’s love -affairs, and at the final scene between Pilar and Assumcion—Pilar’s noble -self-abasement, Assumcion’s confession of her own inferiority. - -And David? He kept away from her, and she noticed that he was very white, -and that his expression was no longer buoyant. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - - -That evening Teresa got no word alone with David. - -The next morning at breakfast it was proposed that Dick, Concha and Rory, -and Arnold, should motor to the nearest links, play a round or two, and -have luncheon at the clubhouse; and David asked if he might go with them -to “caddy.” - -Harry and Guy had to leave by an early train. - -The day wore on; and Teresa noticed that the Doña kept looking at her -anxiously, in a way that she used to look at her when she was a child and -had a bad cold. - -In the afternoon she took a book and went down to the orchard; but she -could not read. The bloom was on the plums; the apples were reddening. - - So silently they one to th’other come, - As colours steale into the Pear or Plum. - -At about four o’clock there was the sound of footsteps behind her, and -looking round she saw David. He was very white. - -“I’ve come to say good-bye,” he said. - -“_Good-bye?_ But I thought ... you were staying some days.” - -“No ... I doubt I must be getting back. I told Mrs. Lane last night, I’m -going by the five-thirty.” - -He stood gazing down at her, looking very troubled. - -“Why have you suddenly changed your plans?” she said, in a very low voice. - -He gazed at her in silence for a few seconds, and then said, “I’m not so -sure if I had any ... well, any _plans_, so to speak, to change ... at -least, I hope ... but, anyway, I’m going ... now,” and he paused. - -She felt as if she were losing hold of things, as in the last few seconds -of chloroform, before one goes off. - -“That play of yours ... that Don ... he was a great sinner,” he was -saying. - -“He repented,” she said, in a small, dry voice. - -“After ... he’d had what he wanted. That’s a nice sort of repentance!” -and he laughed harshly. - -From far away a cock, then another, gave its strange, double-edged cry—a -cry, which, like Hermes, is at once the herald of the morning and all -its radiant denizens, and the marshaller to their dim abode of the light -troupe of passionate ghosts: Clerk Saunders and Maid Margaret, Cathy and -Heathcliff. - -He laughed again, this time a little wildly: “Hark to the voice of one in -the wilderness crying, ‘repent ye!’ Do you remember Newman’s translation -of the _Æterne Rerum Conditor_? How does it go again? Wait ... - - Hark! for Chanticleer is singing, - Hark! he chides the lingering sun - -Something ... something ... wait ... how does it go.... - - Shrill it sounds, the storm relenting - Soothes the weary seaman’s ears; - Once it wrought a great repenting - In that flood of Peter’s tears.” - -Its rhythm, when his voice stopped, continued rumbling dully along the -surface of her mind.... Once it wrought a great repenting in that flood -of Peter’s tears.... Once it wrought a.... Funny! It was the same rhythm -as a _Toccata_ of _Galuppi’s_.... - - Oh! Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very hard to find - Once it wrought a great repenting in that flood of Peter’s.... - -It would have to be “in that flood of Peter’s _mind_....” Not very -good.... What was he saying now? - -“I remember your saying once that the Scotch thought an awful lot about -the sinfulness of sin.... I firmly believe that the power of remitting -sin has been given to the priests of God ... but are we, like that -knight, going to ... well to exploit, that grand expression of God’s -mercy to His creatures, the Sacrament of Penance? Well? So you don’t -think that knight was a bad man?” - -“Oh, I don’t know,” she said wearily. “Good, bad ... what does it all -mean?” - -“You know fine what it all means. You wrote that play,” a ghost of a -smile came into his eyes. “Well ... I suppose ... it’s getting late ...” -he sighed drearily, and then held out his hand. - -For a few seconds she stood as if hypnotised, staring at him. Then in a -rush, the waste, the foolishness of it all swept over her. - -“David! David!” she cried convulsively, seizing his arm. “David! What -is it all about? Don’t you see?... there’s you, here’s me. Plasencia’s -up there where we’ll all soon be having tea and smoking cigarettes. Oh, -it’s a plot! it’s a plot! Don’t be taken in ... why, it’s mad! You’re not -going to become a _priest_!” Then her words were stifled by hysterical -gasps. - -He took hold firmly of both of her wrists. “Hush, you wee thing, hush! -You’re havering, you know, just havering. _You_—Sister Pilar—you’re not -going to try and wreck a vocation! You’d never do that! You know fine -that there’s nothing so grand as sacrifice—to offer up youth and love -to God. It’s not a sacrifice if it doesn’t cost us dear. I don’t think, -somehow, that a bread made of wheat would satisfy you and me long. -Remember, my dear, this isn’t everything—there’s another life. Hush now! -Haven’t you a handkerchief? Here’s mine, then.” - -With a wistful smile he watched her wipe her eyes, and then he said, -“Well, I doubt ... I must be going. The motor will be there. God bless -you ... Pilar,” he looked at her, then turned slowly and walked away in -the direction of the house. - -She made as if to run after him, and then, with a gesture of despair, -sank down upon the ground. - - So silently they one to th’other come, - As colours steale into the Pear or Plum, - And, Aire-like, leave no pression to be seen - Where e’re they met, or parting place has been. - -Well, it was over. She had shut up Life into a plot, and there had been -a counterplot, the liturgical plot into which Rome compresses life’s -vast psychic stratification; and, somehow or other, her plot and the -counterplot had become one. - -Why had he looked so happy when he arrived—only yesterday? Was it joy at -the thought of so soon saying his first mass? She would never know. The -dead, plotting through a plot, had silenced him for ever. - -Oh, foolish race of myth-makers! Starving, though the plain is golden -with wheat; though their tent is pitched between two rivers, dying of -thirst; calling for the sun when it is dark, and for the moon when it is -midday. - - * * * * * - -The sun was setting, and the shadows were growing long. Some one was -coming. It was the Doña, looking, in the evening light, unusually -monumental, and, as on that September afternoon last year when the -children were clinging round her skirts, symbolic. But now Teresa knew of -what she was the symbol. - -She came up to her and laid her hand on her head. “Come in, my child; -it’s getting chilly. I’ve had a fire lit in your room.” - - PARIS, - 4 RUE DE CHEVREUSE, - 1923. - -[Illustration] - -GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD. - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] The _Morería_ was the quarter in Spanish towns assigned to -Moorish colonists. - -[2] A Spaniard who could prove that his ancestry was free from any taint -of Jewish or Moorish blood, was known as an “Old Christian.” - -[3] It was looked upon as a grave crime for a Christian to do this. - -[4] It was a superstition of the Middle Ages that crows were born pure -white. - -[5] _Alguaciles_: the Spanish equivalent in the Middle Ages to policemen. - - - - -[Illustration] - -Messrs. COLLINS’ Latest Novels - -_Messrs. COLLINS will always be glad to send their book lists regularly -to readers who will send name and address._ - - -Crown 8vo. 7/6 net Cloth - -Sayonara - -JOHN PARIS - - -_Kimono_, Mr. John Paris’s first novel, has proved one of the most -remarkably successful books published since the war. It has been a “best -seller” in England and America; it has become famous all over the Far -East and in Canada and Australia, besides being translated into several -foreign languages. Its successor—_Sayonara_—has been eagerly awaited. -The theme is based on the familiar aphorism that “East is East and West -is West,” and that any attempt to reconcile them usually means disaster. -Here again, as in _Kimono_, are found the most vivid pictures of Japan, -old and new; Tokyo and its underworld, a powerful picture of Japanese -farm life, and the cruel slavery of the “Yoshiwara.” - - -Told by an Idiot - -ROSE MACAULAY - -Author of _Dangerous Ages_, _Mystery at Geneva_, _Potterism_, etc. - -Miss Macaulay here presents her philosophy of life, through the -examination of the sharply contrasted careers of the sharply contrasted -members of a large family, from 1879 to 1923. - - -The Imperturbable Duchess And Other Stories - -J. D. BERESFORD - -Author of _The Prisoners of Hartling_, _An Imperfect Mother_, etc. - -This is the first collection of magazine stories which Mr. Beresford has -published. In “An Author’s Advice,” which he has written as a foreword, -he deals searchingly with the technique of the modern short story, and -shows how drastically the type of story to-day is dictated by the editors -of the great American magazines. - - -The Hat of Destiny - -Mrs. T. P. O’CONNOR - -“The best light novel I ever read. The plot is so original, the -characters so sharply drawn and interesting, the interest so sustained, -and the whole thing so witty and amusing, that I could not put it down.” -So wrote Miss Gertrude Atherton to the author of _The Hat of Destiny_. -Oh, that hat! that incomparably fascinating hat, what dire rivalries it -engendered, what domestic tribulations it sardonically plotted when it -arrived in Newport amongst those cosmopolitan butterflies! - - -The Soul of Kol Nikon - -ELEANOR FARJEON - -Is the fantasy of a boy in a Scandinavian village, who from his birth is -treated as a pariah because his mother declares that he is a Changeling. -He himself grows up under the same belief, and the story, treated in the -vein of folklore, leaves it an open question whether there is some truth -in it, or whether it is the result of public opinion upon a distorted -imagination. The tale is told with all the poetry, charm, and imaginative -insight which made _Martin Pippin in the Apple-Orchard_ such a wonderful -success. - - -The Richest Man - -EDWARD SHANKS - -Though in the interval Mr. Shanks has published volumes of verse and -criticism, this brilliantly clever study is the only novel he has written -since 1920. - - -Anthony Dare - -ARCHIBALD MARSHALL - -With _Anthony Dare_ Mr. Marshall returns to the creation of that type -of novel with which his name is most popularly associated, after two -interesting experiments of another kind, that genial “Thick Ear” shocker, -_Big Peter_, and that charming and very successful phantasy, _Pippin_. -It is a study of a boy’s character during several critical years of its -development. The scene is chiefly laid in a rich northern suburb. - - -The Peregrine’s Saga: and Other Stories - -HENRY WILLIAMSON - -Illustrated by WARWICK REYNOLDS - -There have been other stories about birds and animals, but seldom before -has an author combined the gifts of great prose writing and originality -of vision, with a first-hand knowledge of wild life. Mr. Williamson knows -flowers, old men, and children as well as he knows falcons, otters, -hounds, horses, badgers, “mice, and other small deer.” - - -A Perfect Day - -BOHUN LYNCH - -5/- net - -Author of _Knuckles and Gloves_, etc. - -Has any one ever experienced one really perfectly happy day? Mr. Lynch -has made the interesting experiment of showing his hero, throughout one -long summer day, in a state of perfect bliss. The perfect day is a very -simple one and well within the range of possibility. - - -The Counterplot - -HOPE MIRRLEES - -_The Counterplot_ is a study of the literary temperament. Teresa Lane, -watching the slow movement of life manifesting itself in the changing -inter-relations of her family, is teased by the complexity of the -spectacle, and comes to realise that her mind will never know peace till, -by transposing the problem into art, she has reduced it to its permanent -essential factors. - - -The Groote Park Murder - -FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS - -Author of _The Cask_. - -_The Groote Park Murder_ is as fine a book as _The Cask_, and there -can be no higher praise. Here again a delightfully ingenious plot is -masterly handled. From the moment the body of “Albert Smith” is found in -the tunnel at Middelberg, the police of South Africa and subsequently of -Scotland, find themselves faced with a crime of extreme ingenuity and -complexity, the work of a super-criminal, who, as nearly as possible, -successfully evades justice. - - -The Kang-He Vase - -J. S. FLETCHER - -Who murdered the man found roped to the gibbet on Gallows Tree Point? Who -stole Miss Ellingham’s famous Kang-He Vase? What was Uncle Keziah doing -at Middlebourne? This is the first novel by Mr. J. S. Fletcher we have -had the pleasure of publishing, and we are very glad to say that we have -contracted for several more books from his able pen. - - -Ramshackle House - -HULBERT FOOTNER - -Author of _The Owl Taxi_, _The Deaves Affair_, etc. - -This is Hulbert Footner’s finest mystery story. It tells how Pen Broome -saved her lover, accused of the brutal murder of a friend; how she saved -him first from the horde of detectives searching for him in the woods -round Ramshackle House, and then, when his arrest proved inevitable, how, -with indomitable courage and resource, she forged the chain of evidence -which proved him to have been the victim of a diabolical plot. A charming -love story and a real “thriller.” - - -The Finger-Post - -Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY - -Author of _Beanstalk_, etc. - -The scene of this book is the Sussex Weald, and the story is concerned -with the Durrants, who have for generations been thatchers. The book -opens with the birth of a second boy, Joseph, a sickly, peculiar lad, -considered to be half-witted. The theme is his struggle against his lot, -his humble station, his crazy body, the mournful demands of his spirit. -When he becomes a man, his clever brain develops and his worldly progress -bewilders his relatives and neighbours—all of them still refusing to -believe that he is not the fool they have always declared him to be. - - -A Bird in a Storm - -E. MARIA ALBANESI - -Author of _Roseanne_, etc. - -Anne Ranger, brought up in a very worldly atmosphere, finds herself -confronted by a most difficult problem and coerced by her former school -friend—Joyce Pleybury, who has drifted into a bad groove—to take an -oath of secrecy which reacts on Anne’s own life in almost tragic -fashion, shattering her happiness from the very day of her marriage, and -thereafter exposing her like a bird in a storm to be swept hither and -thither, unable to find safe ground on which to stand. - - -Mary Beaudesert, V.S. - -KATHARINE TYNAN - -Author of _A Mad Marriage_, etc. - -Is the story of an aristocratic young woman who feels the call of the -suffering animal creation and obeys it, leaving tenderly loved parents, -an ideal home, and all a girl’s heart could desire, to qualify as a -veterinary surgeon. How she carries out her vocation is told in this -story, which is full of the love of animals. - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COUNTERPLOT*** - - -******* This file should be named 63935-0.txt or 63935-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/3/9/3/63935 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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- font-size: 190%; - margin-top: 0em; - margin-bottom: 1em; - word-spacing: 0em; - letter-spacing: 0em; - line-height: 1; } - h2.pgx { text-align: center; - clear: both; - font-weight: bold; - font-size: 135%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 1em; - word-spacing: 0em; - letter-spacing: 0em; - page-break-before: avoid; - line-height: 1; } - h3.pgx { text-align: center; - clear: both; - font-weight: bold; - font-size: 110%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 1em; - word-spacing: 0em; - letter-spacing: 0em; - line-height: 1; } - h4.pgx { text-align: center; - clear: both; - font-weight: bold; - font-size: 100%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 1em; - word-spacing: 0em; - letter-spacing: 0em; - line-height: 1; } - hr.pgx { width: 100%; - margin-top: 3em; - margin-bottom: 0em; - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; - height: 4px; - border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */ - border-style: solid; - border-color: #000000; - clear: both; } - </style> -</head> -<body> -<h1 class="pgx" title="">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Counterplot, by Hope Mirrlees</h1> -<p>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States -and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no -restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at <a -href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you are not -located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this ebook.</p> -<p>Title: The Counterplot</p> -<p>Author: Hope Mirrlees</p> -<p>Release Date: December 1, 2020 [eBook #63935]</p> -<p>Language: English</p> -<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p> -<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COUNTERPLOT***</p> -<p> </p> -<h3 class="pgx" title="">E-text prepared by<br /> - Mary Glenn Krause, Charlene Taylor,<br /> - University of Chicago, Shawna Milam,<br /> - and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> - (https://www.pgdp.net)</h3> -<p> </p> -<hr class="pgx" /> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<h1>THE COUNTERPLOT</h1> - -<p>Miss Hope Mirrlees, when she wrote <i>Madeleine</i>, -several years ago, was recognised to be one of the -most promising of the younger school of women -novelists.</p> - -<p><i>The Counterplot</i> is a study of the literary temperament. -Teresa Lane, watching the slow movement -of life manifesting itself in the changing -inter-relations of her family, is teased by the -complexity of the spectacle, and comes to realise -that her mind will never know peace till, by -transposing the problem into art, she has reduced -it to its permanent essential factors. So, from -the texture of the words, the emotions, the interactions -of the life going on around her she weaves -a play, the setting of which is a Spanish convent -in the fourteenth century, and this play performs -for her the function that Freud ascribes to dreams, -for by it she is enabled to express subconscious -desires, to vent repressed irritation, to say things -that she is too proud and civilised ever to have -said in any other way. This brief summary can give -but little idea of the charm of style, the subtlety -of characterisation, and the powerful intelligence -which Miss Hope Mirrlees reveals. The play itself -is a most brilliant, imaginative <i>tour de force</i>!</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="max30"> - -<p class="titlepage larger">THE<br /> -COUNTERPLOT</p> - -<p class="center larger"><span class="smaller"><i>by</i></span><br /> -HOPE MIRRLEES<br /> -<span class="smaller">Author of “Madeleine: One of Love’s Jansenists”</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">“Every supposed restoration of the past is a creation of -the future, and if the past which it is sought to restore -is a dream, a thing but imperfectly known, so much the -better.”</p> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Miguel de Unamuno.</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter titlepage" style="width: 100px;"> -<img src="images/collins.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="center">LONDON: 48 PALL MALL<br /> -W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.<br /> -GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND</p> - -<p class="titlepage">Copyright</p> - -<table summary="Printings and dates"> - <tr> - <td>First</td> - <td>Impression,</td> - <td>December, 1923</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Second</td> - <td class="center">”</td> - <td>February, 1924</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Third</td> - <td class="center">”</td> - <td>April, 1924</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p class="titlepage"><i>Manufactured in Great Britain</i></p> - -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p class="center larger"><span class="smaller">TO</span><br /> -JANE HARRISON</p> - -<p class="center">Μάλιστα δέ τ’ ἔκλυον αὐτοί</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</h2> - -</div> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p>Plasencia was a square, medium-sized house of red -brick, built some sixty years ago, in those days when -architects knew a great deal about comfort, but cared -so little about line that every house they designed, -however spacious, was uncompromisingly a “villa.” -Viewed from the front, it was substantial and home-like, -and suggested, even in the height of summer, a “merry -Christmas” and fire-light glinting off the leaves of -holly; from the back, however, it had a look of instability, -of somehow being not firmly rooted in the -earth—a cumbersome Ark, awkwardly perched for a -moment on Ararat, before plunging with its painted -wooden crew into the flood, and sailing off to some -fantastic port.</p> - -<p>It is possible that this effect was not wholly due to the -indifferent draughtsmanship of the Victorian architect, -for there is a hint of the sea in a delicate and boundless -view, and the back of Plasencia lay open to the Eastern -counties.</p> - -<p>Even the shadowy reticulation of a West-country -valley, the spring bloom upon fields and woods, and -red-brick villas that glorifies the tameness of Kent, -are but poor things in comparison with the Eastern -counties in September: yellow stripes of mustard, -jade stripes of cabbage, stripes of old rose which is the -earth, a suggestion of pattern given by the heaps of -manure, and the innumerable shocks of corn, an ardent -gravity given by the red-brown of wheat stubble,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span> -such as the red-brown sails of a fishing boat give to -the milky-blue of a summer sea; here and there a -patch of green tarpaulin, and groups of thatched corn-ricks—shadowy, -abstract, golden, and yet, withal, -homely edifices, like the cottages of those villages of -Paradise whose smoke Herrick used to see in the -distance. An agricultural country has this advantage -over heaths and commons and pastoral land that the -seasons walk across it <i>visibly</i>.</p> - -<p class="tb">On a particular afternoon in September, about three -years ago, Teresa Lane sat in a deck-chair gazing at -this view. She was a pallid, long-limbed young woman -of twenty-eight, and her dark, closely-cropped hair -emphasised her resemblance to that lad who, whether -he be unfurling a map of Toledo, or assisting at the -mysterious obsequies of the Conde de Orgas, is continually -appearing in the pictures of El Greco.</p> - -<p>As she gazed, she thought of the Spanish adjective -<i>pintado</i>, painted, which the Spaniards use for anything -that is bright and lovely—flowers, views; and certainly -this view was <i>pintado</i>, even in the English sense, in -that it looked like a fresco painted on a vast white -wall, motionless and enchanted against the restless, -vibrating foreground. Winds from the Ural -mountains, winds from the Atlantic celebrated Walpurgis-night -on the lawn of Plasencia; and, on such -occasions, to look through the riven garden, the swaying -flowers and grasses, the tossing birch saplings, at -the tranced fields of the view was to experience the -same æsthetic emotion as when one looks at the picture -of a great painter.</p> - -<p>But the back of Plasencia had another glory—its -superb herbaceous border, which, waving banners of -the same hues, only brighter, marched boldly into the -view, and became one with it. Now in September<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span> -it was stiffened by annuals: dahlias, astors, snapdragon, -sunflowers; Californian poppies whose whiteness—at -any rate in the red poppyland of East -Anglia—always seems exotic, miraculous, suggesting -the paradoxical chemical action of the Blood of the -Lamb. There were also great clumps of violas, with -petals of so faint a shade of blue or yellow that every -line of their black tracery stood out clear and distinct, -and which might have been the handiwork of -some delicate-minded and deft-fingered old maid, -expressing her dreams and heart’s ease in a Cathedral -city a hundred years ago. As to herbaceous things -proper, there was St. John’s wort, catmint, borrage, -sage; their stalks grown so long and thick, their -blossoms so big and brave, that old Gerard would -have been hard put to see in them his familiars—the -herbs that, like guardian angels, drew down from -the stars the virtue for the homely offices of easing the -plough-boy’s toothache, the beldame’s ague.</p> - -<p>A great lawn spread between the border and the -house; it was still very threadbare owing to the -patriotic pasturage that, during the last years of the -War, it had afforded to half a dozen sheep, but it was -darned in so many places by the rich, dark silk of -clover leaves as almost to be turned into a new fabric.</p> - -<p>Well, then, the view and border lay simmering in -the late sunshine. A horse was dragging a plough -against the sky-line, and here and there thin streams of -smoke were rising from heaps of smouldering weeds. -In the nearer fields, Teresa could discern small, moving -objects of a dazzling whiteness—white leghorns gleaning -the stubble; and from time to time there reached her -the noise of a distant shot, heralding a supper of roast -hare or partridge in some secluded farm-house. Then, -like a Danish vessel bound for pillage in Mercia, white, -swift, compact, a flock of wood pigeons would flash<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span> -through the air to alight in a far away field and rifle -the corn.</p> - -<p>But so <i>pintado</i> was the view, so under the notion of -art, that these movements across its surface gave one -an æsthetic shock such as one would experience before -a mechanical device introduced into a painting, and, -at the same time, thrilled the imagination, as if the -door in a picture should suddenly open, or silver strains -proceed from the painted shepherd’s pipe.</p> - -<p>Teresa could hardly be said to take a pleasure in the -view and its flowery foreground—indeed, like all lovely -and complicated things, they teased her exceedingly; -because the infinite variety which made up their whole -defied expression. Until the invention of some machine, -she was thinking, shows to literature what are its -natural limits (as the camera and cinema have shown -to painting) by expressing, in some unknown medium, -say a spring wood <i>in toto</i>—appearance, smells, noises, -associations—which will far outstrip in exact representation -the combined qualities of Mozart, Spencer, -Corot, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and yet remain dead and -flat and vulgar,—so long shall we be teased by the -importunities of detail and forget that such things as -spring woods are best expressed lightly, delicately, in -a little song, thus:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The grove are all a pale, frail mist,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The new year sucks the sun;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of all the kisses that we kissed</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Now which shall be the one?</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">As she murmured the lines below her breath, two -children came running down the grass path that divided -the herbaceous border—Anna and Jasper Sinclair, the -grandchildren of the house.</p> - -<p>Teresa watched their progress, critically, through<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span> -half-closed lids. Yes, children are the right <i>fauna</i> -for a garden—they turn it at once into a world that is -miniature and Japanese. But perhaps a kitten prowling -among flower-beds is better still—it is so amusing to -watch man’s decorous arrangement of nature turning, -under the gambols of the sinister little creature, into -something primitive and tropical—bush, or jungle, or -whatever they call it in Brazil and places; but Anna -was getting too big.</p> - -<p>Human beings too! Worse than the view, because -more restless and more complicated, yet insisting on -being dealt with; even Shelley could not keep out of -his garden his somewhat Della Cruscan Lady.</p> - -<p>The children came running up to her.</p> - -<p>“You don’t know what <i>we’ve</i> found, what <i>we’ve</i> -found, what <i>we’ve</i> found!” “Let <i>me</i> say! a <i>dead</i> -hare, and we’ve buried him and....” “And I’ve -found a new fern; I’ve got ten and a half kinds now -and I ought to get a Girl Guide’s badge for them, and -the Doña <i>promised</i> me some more blotting-paper, -but....”</p> - -<p>Teresa stroked Jasper’s sticky little hand and listened -indulgently to their chatter. Then they caught sight of -Mrs. Lane coming out of the house, and rushed at her, -shouting, “Doña! Doña!”</p> - -<p>The Spaniards deal in a cavalier way with symbolism; -for instance, they put together from the markets, and -streets, and balconies of Andalusia a very human -type of female loveliness; next, they express this -type with uncompromising realism in painted wooden -figures which they set up in churches, saying, “This -is not Pepa, or Ana, or Carmen. Oh, no! It isn’t a -woman at all: it’s a mysterious abstract doctrine of -the Church called the Immaculate Conception.” They -then proceed to fall physically in love with this abstract -doctrine—serenading it with lyrics, organising pageants<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span> -in its honour, running their swords through those who -deny its truth, storming the Vatican for its acceptance.</p> - -<p>Hence, for those who are acquainted with Spain, it -is hard to look on Spanish concrete things with a perfectly -steady eye—they are apt to become transparent -without losing their solidity.</p> - -<p>However this may be, Mrs. Lane (the Doña, as her -friends and family called her), standing there smiling -and monumental, with the children clinging to her -skirts, seemed to Teresa a symbol—of what she was not -quite sure. Maternity? No, not exactly; but it -was something connected with maternity.</p> - -<p>The children, having said their say, made for the -harbour of their own little town—to wit, the nursery—where, -over buns, and honey, and chocolate cake, they -would tell their traveller’s tales; and the Doña bore -down slowly upon Teresa and sank heavily into a -basket chair. She raised her <i>lorgnette</i> and gazed at -her daughter critically.</p> - -<p>“Teresa,” she said, in her slow, rather guttural -voice, “why do you so love that old skirt? But I -warn you, it is going to the very next jumble sale of -Mrs. Moore.”</p> - -<p>Teresa smiled quite amicably.</p> - -<p>“Why can’t you let Concha’s elegance do for us -both?” she asked.</p> - -<p>So toneless and muted was Teresa’s voice that it was -generally impossible to deduce from it, as also from her -rather weary impassive face, of what emotion her -remarks were the expression.</p> - -<p>“Rubbish! There is no reason why I shouldn’t -have <i>two</i> elegant daughters,” retorted the Doña, wondering -the while why exactly Teresa was jealous of Concha. -“It <i>must</i> be a man; but who?” she asked herself. -Aloud she said, “I wonder why tea is so late. By the -way, I told you, didn’t I, that Arnold is coming for the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span> -week-end and bringing Guy? And some young -cousin of Guy’s—I think he said his name was Dundas.”</p> - -<p>“I know—Rory Dundas. Guy often talks about -him. He’s a soldier, so he’ll probably be even more -tiresome than Guy.”</p> - -<p>Oho! How, exactly, was this to be interpreted?</p> - -<p>“Why, Teresa, a nice young officer, with beautiful -blue eyes like Guy perhaps, only not slouching like -Cambridge men, and you think that he will be <i>tiresome</i>!”</p> - -<p>Again Teresa smiled amicably, and wished for the -thousandth time that her mother would sometimes stop -being ironical—or, at any rate, that her irony had a -different flavour.</p> - -<p>“And so Guy is tiresome too, is he?”</p> - -<p>Teresa laughed. “No one shows more that they -think so than you, Doña.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! but I think <i>all</i> Englishmen tiresome.”</p> - -<p>Then the butler and parlour-maid appeared with tea; -and a few minutes later Concha, the other daughter, -strolled up, her arm round the waist of a small, elderly -lady.</p> - -<p>Concha was a very beautiful girl of twenty-two. She -was tall, and built delicately on a generous scale; her -hair was that variety of auburn which, when found -among women of the Latin races, never fails to give -a thrill of unexpectedness, and a whiff of romance—hinting -at old old rapes by Normans and Danes. -As one looked at her one realised what a beautiful -creature the Doña must once have been.</p> - -<p>The elderly lady was governess <i>emerita</i> of the -Lanes. They had grown so attached to her that she -had stayed on as “odd woman”—arranging the -flowers, superintending the servants, going up to -London at the sales to shop for the family. They -called her “Jollypot,” because “jolly” was the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span> -adjective with which she qualified anything beautiful, -kindly, picturesque, or quaint; “pot” was added as -the essence of the æsthetic aspect of “jolliness,” -typified in the activities of Arts and Crafts and Artificers’ -Guilds—indeed she always, and never more than to-day, -looked as if she had been dressed by one of these institutions; -on her head was a hat of purple and green -straw with a Paisley scarf twisted round the crown, -round her shoulders was another scarf—handwoven, -gray and purple—on her torso was an orange jumper -into which were inserted squares of canvas wool-work -done by a Belgian refugee with leanings to Cubism; -and beads,—enormous, painted wooden ones. Once -Harry Sinclair (the father of Anna and Jasper) had -exploded a silence with the question, “Why is Jollypot -like the Old Lady of Leeds? Because she’s ... -er ... er ... INFESTED WITH BEADS!!!”</p> - -<p>While on this subject let me add that it was -characteristic of her relationship with her former -pupils that they called her Jollypot to her face, and -that she had never taken the trouble to find out -why; that the great adventure of her life had been -her conversion to Catholicism—a Catholicism, however, -which retained a tinge of Anglicanism: to wit, -a great deal of vague enthusiasm for “dear, lovely -St. Francis of Assisi,” combined with a neglect of the -crude and truly Catholic cult of that most potent of -“medicine-men”—St. Anthony of Padua; and that -taste for Dante studies so characteristic of middle-aged -Anglican spinsters. Indeed, she was remarkably -indiscriminating in her tastes, and loved equally Shakespeare, -Dante, Mrs. Browning, the Psalms, Anne -Thackeray, and W. J. Locke; but from time to time -she surprised one by the poetry and truth of her -observations.</p> - -<p>The Doña, holding in mid-air a finger biscuit soaked<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span> -in chocolate, smiled and blinked a welcome; but her -eyes flashed to her brain the irritated message, “If -only the jumper were purple, or even green! And those -beads—does she sleep in them?”</p> - -<p>Partly from a Latin woman’s exaggerated sense of -the ridiculous possibilities in raiment, partly from an -Andalusian <i>Schaden-freude</i>, ever since she had known -Jollypot she had tried to persuade her that a devout -Catholic should dress mainly in black; but Jollypot -would flush with indignation and cry, “Oh! Mrs. -Lane, how <i>can</i> you? When God has given us all these -<i>jolly</i> colours! Just look at your own garden! I -remember a dear old lady when I was a girl who used -to say she didn’t see why we should say grace for <i>food</i> -because that was a necessity and God was <i>bound</i> to -give it to us, but that we should say it for the <i>luxuries</i>—flowers -and colours—that it was so good and <i>fatherly</i> -of Him to think of.” Which silly, fanciful Protestantism -would put the Doña into a frenzy of -irritation.</p> - -<p>But Jollypot—secure in her knowledge of her own -consideration of the Sesame and Lilies of the field—had, -as usual, a pleasant sense of being prettily dressed, -and, quite unaware that she offended, she sat down to -her tea with a little sigh of innocent pleasure. Concha, -after having hugged the unresponsive Doña, and -affectionately inquired after Teresa’s headache, wearily -examined the contents of the tea-table, and having -taken a small piece of bread and butter, muttered that -she wished Rendall would cut it thinner.</p> - -<p>“And what have you been doing this afternoon?” -asked the Doña.</p> - -<p>“At the Moore’s,” answered Concha, a little sulkily.</p> - -<p>“But how very kind of you! That poor Mrs. -Moore must have been quite touched ... did I hear -that Eben was home on leave?” and the Doña<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span> -scrutinised her with lazy amusement; Teresa, also, -looked at her.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, he’s back,” said Concha, lightly, but -blushing crimson all the same. She loathed being -teased. “How incredibly Victorian and Spanish it -all is!” she thought.</p> - -<p>She yawned, then poured some tea and cream into -a saucer, added two lumps of sugar, and put it down -on the lawn for the refreshment of ’Snice, the dachshund.</p> - -<p>“And how was Eben?” asked the Doña.</p> - -<p>“Oh, he was in <i>great</i> form—really <i>extraordinarily</i> -funny about getting drunk at Gibraltar,” drawled -Concha; she always drawled when she was angry, -embarrassed, or “feeling grand.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! the English always get drunk at Gibraltar—it -wasn’t at all original of Eben.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose not,” and again Concha yawned.</p> - -<p>“And I suppose Mrs. Moore said, ‘Ebenebeneben! -Prenny guard!’ which meant that one of the Sunday -school children was coming up the path and he must -be careful what he said.”</p> - -<p>Concha gurgled with laughter—pleasantly, like a -child being tickled—at the Doña’s mimicry; and the -atmosphere cleared.</p> - -<p>Teresa remembered Guy Cust’s once saying that -conversation among members of one family was a -most uncomfortable thing. When one asks questions it -is not for information (one knows the answers already) -but to annoy. It is, he had said, as if four or five men, -stranded for years on a desert island with a pack of -cards, had got into the habit of playing poker all day -long, and that, though the game has lost all savour -and all possibilities of surprise; for each knowing so -well the “play” of the other, no bluff ever succeeds, -and however impassive their opponent’s features, they -can each immediately, by the sixth sense of intimacy,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span> -distinguish the smell of a “full house,” or a “straight,” -from that of a “pair.”</p> - -<p>For instance, the Doña and Teresa knew quite well -where Concha had been that afternoon; and Concha -had known that they would know and pretend that -they did not, so she had arrived irritated in -advance, and the Doña and Teresa had watched her -approach, maliciously amused in advance.</p> - -<p>“Well, and was Mrs. Moore hinting again that she -would like to have her Women’s Institute in my garden?” -asked the Doña.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, and she wants Teresa to go down to the -Institute one night and talk to them about Seville, but -I was quite firm and said I was sure nothing would -induce her.”</p> - -<p>“You were wrong,” said Teresa, in an even voice, -“I should like to talk to them about Seville.”</p> - -<p>“Good Lord!” muttered Concha.</p> - -<p>“Give them a description of a bull-fight, Teresa. It -would amuse me to watch the face of Mrs. Moore and -the Vicar,” said the Doña.</p> - -<p>Teresa and Concha laughed, and Jollypot shuddered, -muttering, “Those poor horses!”</p> - -<p>The Doña looked at her severely. “Well, Jollypot -and what about the poor foxes and hares in England?”</p> - -<p>This amœbæan dirge was one often chanted by the -Doña and Jollypot.</p> - -<p>“Oh! look at the birds’ orchard ... all red with -haws. Poor little fellows! They’ll have a good -harvest,” cried Jollypot, pointing to the double hedge -of hawthorn that led to the garage, and evidently glad -to turn from man’s massacring of beasts to God’s -catering for birds.</p> - -<p>“Seville!” said Concha meditatively; and a silence -fell upon them while the word went rummaging among -the memories of the mother and her daughters.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span></p> - -<p>Tittering with one’s friends behind one’s <i>reja</i>, while -Mr. Lane down below (though then only twenty-three, -already stout and intensely prosaic), self-consciously -sang a Spanish serenade with an execrable -English accent; gipsy girls hawking lottery tickets -in the <i>Sierpes</i>; eating ices in the <i>Pasaje del Oriente</i>; -the ladies in mantillas laughing shrilly at the queer -English hats and clumsy shoes; the wall of the Alcazar -patined with jessamine; long noisy evenings (rather -like poems by Campoamor), of cards and acrostics and -flirtation; roses growing round orange trees; exquisite -horsemanship; snub-nosed, ill-shaven men -looking with laughing eyes under one’s hat, and crying, -<i>Viva tu madre!</i> Dark, winding, high-walled streets, -called after Pedro the Cruel’s Jewish concubines; one’s -milk and vegetables brought by donkeys, stepping as -delicately as Queen Guinevere’s mule. One by one the -candles of the <i>Tenebrario</i> extinguished to the moan -of the <i>miserere</i>, till only the waxen thirteenth remains -burning; goats, dozens of wooden Virgins in stiff brocade, -every one of them <i>sin pecado concebida</i>, city of goats -and Virgins ... yes, that’s it—city of goats and -Virgins.</p> - -<p>“By the way,” said Concha nonchalantly, “I’ve -asked Eben to lunch on Sunday.”</p> - -<p>The Doña bowed ironically and Concha blushed, -and calling ’Snice got up and moved majestically -towards the house.</p> - -<p>“Arnold’s coming on Saturday, Jollypot,” said the -Doña, triumphantly.</p> - -<p>“The dear fellow! That <i>is</i> jolly,” said Jollypot; -then sharply drew in her breath, as if suddenly remembering -something, and, with a worried expression, -hurried away.</p> - -<p>The thing she had suddenly remembered was that -the billiard-table was at that moment strewn with rose<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span> -petals drying upon blotting-paper, and that Arnold -would be furious if they were not removed before his -arrival.</p> - -<p>The Doña, by means of a quizzical look at Teresa, -commented upon the last quarter of an hour, but -Teresa’s expression was not responsive.</p> - -<p>“Well,” said the Doña, regretfully hoisting her bulk -from her basket-chair, “I must go and catch Rudge -before he goes home and tell him to keep the sweet -corn for Saturday—Arnold’s so fond of it. And -there’s the border to be—oh, your father and his -golf!”</p> - -<p>The irritated tone of this exclamation ended on the -last word in a note of scorn.</p> - -<p class="tb">Teresa sat on alone by the deserted tea-table, idly -watching the Doña standing by the border, in earnest -talk with the gardener.</p> - -<p>How comely and distinguished, and how beautifully -modelled the Doña looked in the westering light! -No one could model like late sunshine—she had seen it -filtering through the leaves of a little wood and -turning the smooth, gray trunk of a beech into an -exquisite clay torso, not yet quite dry, fresh from the -plastic thumb, faithfully maintaining the delusion -that, though itself a pliable substance, the frame over -which it was stretched was rigid and bony. The Doña -and beech trees, however, were beautiful, even without -the evening light; but she had also seen the portion -of a rain-pipe that juts out at right angles from the -wall before taking its long and graceless descent—she -had seen the evening light turn its dirty yellow into -creamy flesh-tints, its contour into the bent knee of a -young Diana.</p> - -<p>Forces that made things <i>look</i> beautiful were certainly -part of a “Merciful Dispensation.” Memory was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span> -one of these forces. How exquisite, probably, life at -Plasencia would look some day!</p> - -<p>It would take a lot of mellowing, she thought, with -a little smile. Again it was a question of the swarm -of tiny details: beauty, evidently, requiring their -elimination.</p> - -<p>But, for instance, the interplay of emotions at tea -that afternoon—was it woven from the tiny brittle -threads of unimportant details, or was it made of a -more resisting stuff?</p> - -<p>Why was the Doña equally irritated that she, Teresa, -ignored young men, and that Concha ran after them—like -a tabby-cat in perpetual season? No—that -was disgusting, coarse, unkind. There was nothing -ugly about Concha’s abundant youth: she was -merely normal—following the laws of life, no more -disgusting than a ripe apple ready to drop.</p> - -<p>There came into Teresa’s head the beginning of one -of Cervantes’s <i>Novelas Exemplares</i>, which tells of the -impulse that drives young men, although they may -love their parents dearly, to break away from their -home and wander across the world, “... nor can -meagre fare and poor lodging cause them to miss the -abundance of their father’s house; nor does travelling -on foot weary them, nor cold torment them, nor heat -exhaust them.”</p> - -<p>And, added Teresa, rich in the wisdom of a myriad -songs and stories, they are probably fully aware, ere -they shut behind them the door of their home, that -some day they, too, will discover that freedom is nought -but a lonely wind, howling for the past.</p> - -<p><i>Il n’y a pour l’homme que trois événements: naître, -vivre et mourir</i> ... yes, but to realise that, personally, -emotionally—to feel <i>as one</i> the three events—three -simultaneous things making one thing that is perpetually -repeated, three notes in a chord—and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span> -chord Life itself ... an agonising sense of speed ... -yes, the old simile of the rushing river that carries one—where? -But every life, or group of lives, is deaf to -the chord, stands safe on the bank of the river, till a -definite significant moment, which, looked back upon, -seems to have announced its arrival with an actual -noise—a knocking, or a rumbling. To Teresa, it -seemed that that moment for them all at Plasencia -had been Pepa’s death, two years ago—<i>that</i> had been -what had plunged them into the river. Before, all of -them (the Doña too) had lived in Eternity. Now, when -Teresa awoke in the night, the minutes dripped, one by -one, on to the same nerve, till the agony became almost -unbearable; and it was the agony of listening to a tale -which the narrator cannot gabble fast enough, because -you know the end beforehand—yes, something which is -at once a ball all tightly rolled up that you hold in your -hand and a ball which you are slowly unwinding.</p> - -<p>She looked towards the house—the old ark that had -so long stood high and dry; now, it seemed to her, the -water had reached the windows of the lowest story—soon -it would be afloat, carrying them all ... no, not -her father. He, she was sure, was still—would always -be—outside of Time.</p> - -<p>But Concha—Concha was there as much as she -herself.</p> - -<p>Why did she mind in Concha the same intellectual -insincerities and pretensions, the same airs and graces, -that she had loved in Pepa?</p> - -<p>She smiled tenderly as she remembered how once -at school she had opened Pepa’s <i>Oxford Book of English -Verse</i> at the fly-leaf and found on it, in a “leggy,” -unfledged hand, the following inscription: “To Josepha -Lane, from her father,” and underneath, an extract -from Cicero’s famous period in praise of letters—<i>et -haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span> -and so on. (That term Pepa’s form had been reading -the <i>Pro Archia</i>.)</p> - -<p>Teresa had gone to her and asked her what it meant.</p> - -<p>“Dad would <i>never</i> have written that—besides, it’s -in your writing.”</p> - -<p>Pepa had blushed, and then laughed, and said, “Well, -you see I wanted Ursula Noble” (Ursula Noble’s father -was a celebrated Hellenist) “to think that <i>we</i> had a -brainy father too!”</p> - -<p>Then, how bustling and important she had been when, -shorty after her <i>début</i>, she had become engaged to -Harry Sinclair—a brilliant Trinity Don, much older -than herself, and already an eminent Mendelian—how -quickly and superficially she had taken over all his -views—liberalism, atheism, eugenics!</p> - -<p>Oh, yes, there had been much that had been irritating -in Pepa; but, though Teresa had recognised it mentally, -she had never felt it in her nerves.</p> - -<p>She was suddenly seized with a craving for Pepa’s -presence—dear, innocent, complacent Pepa, so lovely, -so loving, with her fantastic, yet, somehow or other, -cheering plans for one’s pleasure or well-being—plans -that she galvanised with her own generous vitality.</p> - -<p>Yes, Pepa had certainly been very happy during her -six or seven years of married life at Cambridge: cultured -undergraduates pouring into tea on Sundays, and Pepa -taking them as seriously as they took themselves, -laughing delightedly at the latest epigram that was -going the round of Trinity and Kings’—“Dogs are -sentimental,” or “Shaw is so Edwardian”—trolling -<i>Spanish Ladies</i> or the <i>Morning Dew</i> in chorus round -the piano; footing it on the lawn—undergraduates, -Newnham students, Cambridge matrons, young dons, -eyeglasses and prominent teeth glittering in the sun, -either a slightly patronising smile glued on the face, or -an expression of strenuous endeavour—to the favourite<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span> -melodies of Charles II.; suffrage meetings without end, -lectures on English literature, practising glees in the -Choral Society; busy making cardboard armour for -the Greek play, or bicycling off to Grantchester, or -taking Anna to her dancing class, or off to Boots to -change her novels—a Galsworthy for herself, a Phillips -Oppenheim for Harry.</p> - -<p>It had always seemed to Teresa that this life, in spite -of its suffrage and girl’s clubs and “culture,” was both -callous and frivolous in comparison with the tremendous -adventures that were going on, all round, in laboratories -and studies and College rooms: at any moment Professor -—— might be able to resolve an atom, and blow -up the whole of Cambridge in the process; and, in -little plots of ground, flowers whose <i>habitat</i> was Peru -or the Himalayas, were springing up with—say, purple -pollen instead of golden, and that meant that a new -species had been born; or else, Mr. —— of Christ’s, or -John’s, or Caius, would suddenly feel the blood rush to -his head as a blinding light was thrown on the verbal -nouns of classical Arabic by a French article he had -just been reading on the use of diminutives in the -harems of Morocco.</p> - -<p>Anyhow, whether callous or frivolous or both, it had -given Pepa seven happy years.</p> - -<p>What Harry Sinclair’s contribution—apart from the -necessary background—had been to that happiness it -would, perhaps, be difficult to determine. There -could be no one in the world less sympathetic to the -small emotional things—so important in married life—than -Harry: homesickness, imagined slights when one -was tired, fears that one’s son aged three summers -might some twenty years ahead fall in love with little -Angela Webb, and there was consumption in the -family—he viewed them with the impatience of a young -lady before the furniture of a drawing-room that she<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span> -wants to clear for a dance, the dance, in his case, being -the sweeps, pirouettes, glides, of endless clever and -abstract talk through the clear, wide spaces of an intellectual -universe.</p> - -<p>However, emotionally, Pepa had never quite grown -up, so perhaps she had missed nothing.</p> - -<p>All the same, when he had broken down at her -death, there had been something touching and magnificent -in his fine pity—not for himself, but for Pepa, so -ruthlessly, foolishly, struck down in the hey-day of her -splendid vigour. “It’s devilish! devilish!” he had -sobbed.</p> - -<p>During the last days of her life, Pepa had talked to -Teresa a good deal about Anna and Jasper. “Make -them want to be nice people,” she had said; and -Teresa remembered that, even through her misery, -she had wondered that Pepa had not used a favourite -Cambridge <i>cliché</i> and said, “Make them want to be -<i>splendid people</i>”; perhaps it was she, Teresa, who was -undeveloped emotionally.</p> - -<p>She had tried hard to do what Pepa had asked her; -but in these latter days, when the outlines of the virtues -have lost their firmness, it is difficult to give children -that concrete sense of Goodness that had made the -Victorian mothers’ simple homilies, in after years, -glow in the memory of their children with the radiance -of a Platonic Myth.</p> - -<p>Well, anyhow, she must go up to the nursery now.</p> - -<p class="tb">She walked into the house. In the hall, as if in -illustration of her views on memory, the light was -falling on, and beautifying a medley of objects, incongruous -as the contents of one’s dreams: the engraving -of Frith’s <i>Margate</i> that had hung in Mr. Lane’s -nursery in the old Kensington house where he had been -born; a large red and blue india-rubber ball dropt by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span> -Anna or Jasper; the old Triana pottery, running in a -frieze round the walls, among which an occasional -Hispano-Mauresque plate yielded up to the touch of the -sun the store of fire hidden in its lustre; a heap of dusty -calling-cards in a flat dish on the table; Arnold’s old -Rugby blazer, hanging, a brave patch of colour, among -the sombre greatcoats.... Through the half-opened -door of the drawing-room came a scent of roses; and -through the green baize door that led to the kitchen the -strange, lewd sounds of servants making merry over -their tea. Probably Gladys, the under-housemaid, was -reading cups.</p> - -<p>Teresa mounted the wide, easy stairs, and, passing -through another green baize door, entered the children’s -quarters, and then the nursery itself. There, -tea finished and cleared away, a feeling of vague dissatisfaction -had fallen on the two children. Every minute -bed-time was drawing nearer, and anxious eyes kept -turning towards the door; would any one come before -it was too late, and Jasper was already plunging and -“being silly” in the bath, while Anna, clad in a pink -flannel dressing-gown, her hair in two tight little plaits, -was putting tidy her books and toys, and—so as to -perform the daily good deed enjoined by the Girl -Guides—Jasper’s too?</p> - -<p>Their craving for the society of “grown-ups” was -as touching and inexplicable, it seemed to Teresa, as -that of dogs. She had noticed that they longed for it -most between tea and bed-time—it was as if they needed, -then, a <i>viaticum</i> against the tedium of going to bed -and the terrors of the night. Nor, she had noticed, -was Nanny, dearly though they loved her, capable of -giving this <i>viaticum</i>, nor could any man provide it: it -had to be given by a grandmother, or mother, or -aunt.</p> - -<p>So Teresa’s advent was very warmly welcomed;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span> -and sitting down in the rocking-chair she tried to -perform the difficult task of amusing Anna and Jasper -at the same time. For between Anna of nine and -Jasper of six there was very little in common.</p> - -<p>Jasper, like the boy Froissart, “never yet had tired -of children’s games as they are played before the age of -twelve”: these meaningless hidings, and springings, -and booings, and bouncings of balls. His mind, too, -was all little leaps, and springs, and squeals, and queer -little instincts running riot, with a tendency to baby -<i>cabotinage</i>. “Don’t be silly, Jasper!” “Don’t show -off!” were continually being said to him.</p> - -<p>Anna’s mind, on the other hand, was completely -occupied with solid problems and sensible interests, -namely, “I hope that silly Meg will marry Mr. Brook -(she was reading Louisa Alcott’s <i>Little Women</i>). I -expect the balls were damp to-day, as they wouldn’t -bounce ... it would be nice if I could get a badge -for tennis next year. <i>Ut</i> with the subjunctive ... -no, no, the accusative and infinitive ... wait a -minute ... I’m not quite sure. Every square with -a stamp in it—every <i>single</i> square. I wonder why -grown-ups don’t spend <i>all</i> their money on stamps. I -wonder if Daddy remembered to keep those Argentine -ones for me ... little pictures of a man that looks -like George—George—George IV., I think—anyhow, the -one that didn’t wear a wig ... the Argentine ones -are always like that ... that’ll make six Argentine -stamps. Brazil ones are pretty, too ... what’s the -capital of Brazil again?”</p> - -<p>Teresa had found that a story—one that combined -realism with the marvellous—was the best focus for -these divergent interests; so she started a story.</p> - -<p>The sun was setting; and the border and view, -painted on the glass of the nursery windows, grew dim. -Some one in the garden whistled the air of:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">You made me love you:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I didn’t want to do it,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I didn’t want to do it.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Nanny sat with her sewing, listening too, a pleased -smile on her face, the expression of a vague and complex -feeling of satisfaction: for one thing, it was all so -suitable and what she had been used to in her other -places—kind auntie telling the children a story after -tea; then there was a sense of “moral uplift” as, -doubtless, the story was allegorical; poor Mrs. Sinclair -in heaven, too—she would be glad if she could see -what a good aunt they had—then there was also a -genuine interest in the actual story; for no nurse -without a sense of narrative and the marvellous is fit -for her post.</p> - -<p>“Bed-time, I’m afraid. Kiss kind Auntie and say, -‘Thank you, Auntie, for the nice story.’”</p> - -<p>Outside, the cowman was leading the cows home to -the byre across the lawn. It was a good thing that -Rudge, the head gardener, was safe in his cottage, -eating his tea. Far away an express flashed across -the view, whistling like a nightjar, giving a sudden -whiff of London that evaporated as swiftly as its smoke.</p> - -<p>“But we don’t call her ‘Auntie’; we call her -‘Teresa,’” said Anna for the thousandth time.</p> - -<p>“Now, Anna dear, don’t be rude. Up you get, -Jasper. I’m afraid, miss, it really is bed-time ... -and they were late last night too.”</p> - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>Teresa dressed and went down to the drawing-room, -to find her father and Jollypot already there and -chatting amicably.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span></p> - -<p>“The place was full of salmon at four and sixpence a -pound, and he said, ‘You’ll never get rid of that!’ and -the fishmonger said, ‘Won’t I? It’ll go like winking,’ -and the other chap said, ‘Who’ll buy it these hard -times?’ and he said, ‘The miners, of course.’”</p> - -<p>Dick Lane was a stockily-built man of middle height, -with a round, rubicund face. A Frenchman had once -described him as, <i>Le type accompli du farmer-gentleman</i>.</p> - -<p>He was, however, a Londoner, born and bred, as his -fathers had been before him for many a generation; -but, as they had always had enough and to spare for -beef and mutton and bacon, the heather of Wales -and the pannage of the New Forest had helped to -build their bones; besides, it was not so very long -ago that cits could go a-maying without being late -for ’Change; and then, there is the Cockney’s dream -of catching, one day before he dies, the <i>piscis rarus</i>—a -Thames trout—a dream which, though it never -be realised, maketh him to lie down in green pastures -and leadeth him beside the still waters.</p> - -<p>As to Dick, he liked cricket, and the smell of manure -and of freshly-cut hay, he liked pigs, and he liked wide, -quiet vistas; but he liked them as a background to -his prosaic and quietly regulated activities—much as -a golfer, though mainly occupied with the progress of -the game, subconsciously is not indifferent to the -springy turf aromatic with thyme and scabious, nor -to the pungent breezes from the sea, nor to the sweep -of the downs.</p> - -<p>He and Teresa exchanged friendly nods, and she, -sinking into a chair, began to contemplate him—much -as Blake may have contemplated the tiger, -when he wondered:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">What mysterious hand and eye</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Framed its awful symmetry.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">There he sat, pink from his bath, pleasantly tired after -his two rounds of golf, expounding to Jollypot his -views on the threatened strike—the heir to all the -ages.</p> - -<p>For his body and soul were knit from strange old -fragments: sack; fear of the plague; terror of the -stars; a vision of the Virgin Queen borne, like a relic -in a casket, on the shoulders of fantastically-dressed -gentlemen; Walsingham; sailor’s tales of Spanish -ladies; a very English association between the august -word of Liberty and the homely monosyllable Wilkes; -dynasties tottering to the tune of “Lillybolero”; -Faith, Hope, and Charity, stimulated by cries of, “No -Popery,” “Lavender, Sweet Lavender,” “Pity the -poor prisoners of the Fleet”; Dr. Donne thundering -Redemption at Paul’s Cross, the lawn at his wrist -curiously edged with a bracelet of burnished hair; -Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, Pride, Lechery, -Robin Hood, throbbing in ballads, or else, alive and -kicking and bravely dressed beyond one’s dreams, -floating in barges down the Thames; Death—grinning -in stone from crevices of the churches, dancing in -churchyards with bishops and kings and courtesans, -forming the burden of a hundred songs, and at last, one -day, catching one oneself; Death—but every death -cancelled by a birth.</p> - -<p>Without all this he would not have been sitting -there, saying, “The English working man is at bottom -a sensible chap, and if they would only appeal to his -common sense it would be all right.”</p> - -<p>Then the gong sounded. Dick looked at his watch -and remarked, quite good-humouredly, “I wonder -how many times your mother has been in time for -dinner during the thirty years we have been married.”</p> - -<p>At last the door opened, and the Doña came in with -Concha.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span></p> - -<p>“I have just been saying I wonder how many times -you have been in time for dinner since we were married.”</p> - -<p>The Doña ignored this remark, and busied herself -in straightening Teresa’s fichu.</p> - -<p>Then they went in to dinner.</p> - -<p>“By the way, Anna,” said Dick, looking across at -the Doña and sucking the soup off his moustache, “I -was playing golf with Crofts, and he says there’s going -to be a wonderful new rose at the show this year—terra -cotta coloured. It’s a Lyons one; he says it’s -been got by a new way of hybridising. We must ask -Harry about it.”</p> - -<p>“Harry wouldn’t know—he knows nothing about -gardening,” said the Doña scornfully.</p> - -<p>“Not know? Why, he’ll know <i>all</i> about it. That -fellow Worthington—you know who I mean, the chap -that went on that commission to India—well, he’s a -knowledgeable sort of chap, and he asked me the other -day at the Club if Dr. Sinclair of Cambridge wasn’t a -son-in-law of mine, and he said that he’d been making -the most wonderful discoveries lately.”</p> - -<p>“What’s the use of discoveries—of Harry’s, at any -rate? They do no one any good,” said the Doña -sullenly.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t know; there’s no knowing what these -things mayn’t lead to—they may teach us to improve -the human stock and all sorts of things”; and then -Dick applied himself to the more interesting subject of -his fried sole, oblivious, in spite of years of experience, -that his remark had horrified his wife by its impious -heresy.</p> - -<p>However, her only comment was an ironical smile.</p> - -<p>“To learn to know people through flowers—what a -lovely idea,” mused Jollypot, who was too absent-minded -to be tactful. “I think it is his work among -flowers that makes Dr. Sinclair so—so<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span>——”</p> - -<p>“So like a flower himself, eh?” grinned Dick, with -a sudden vision of his large, massive, overbearing -son-in-law.</p> - -<p>“I’m sure flowers really irritate Harry horribly,” -said Concha. “They’ve probably got the Oxford -manner, or are not Old Liberals, or something.”</p> - -<p>“You are quite right, Concha. Both flowers and -children irritate him,” said the Doña bitterly.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t know,” said Dick, with indifferent good -humour. “By the way,” he added, “I’ve asked a -young fellow called Munroe down for the week-end. -He’s representing a South African sugar firm we have -to do with ... it’ll be all right, won’t it?”</p> - -<p>“Well, Arnold’s written to say he’s coming, and he -doesn’t like strangers, you know,” said the Doña.</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m blessed ... has it come to this ...” -he spluttered, roused completely out of his habitual -good humour.</p> - -<p>“No, it hasn’t,” said Concha soothingly, and laid a -hand on his.</p> - -<p>“Well, all the same, it’s ...” he growled; and -then subsided, slightly appeased.</p> - -<p>The Doña, quite unmoved, continued placidly eating -her sole. Then she remarked, “And where is your -friend to sleep, may I ask? Arnold is bringing down -Guy and a cousin of his. When the children are here -you <i>know</i> how little room we have.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose one of them—Arnold, as far as that -goes—can sleep at Rudge’s,” said Dick sulkily.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I can sleep in Dad’s dressing-room, if it comes -to that,” said Teresa.</p> - -<p>“Or I can,” said Concha.</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, you’re so much more dependent on your -own dressing-table and your own things,” said Teresa; -and Concha blushed. Innocent remarks of Teresa’s had -a way of making her blush; but she was a fighter.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span></p> - -<p>“What’s the good Colonial like?” she asked, her -voice not quite natural—and thinking the while, “I -<i>will</i> ask if I choose! It’s absolutely unbearable how -self-conscious they’re making me—it’s like servants.”</p> - -<p>“The Colonial—what Colonial? Oh, Monroe! He’s -a Scot really, but he’s been out there some years; -done jolly well, too. He’s a gallant fellow, too—V.C. -in the war.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no-o-o!” drawled Concha, “<i>how</i> amusing! -V.C.’s are so exotic—it’s like seeing a fox suddenly in -a wood——” and then she blushed again, for she -realised that this remark was not original, but Guy -Cust’s, and that Teresa was looking at her.</p> - -<p>“What’s he like?” she went on hurriedly.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t know ... he’s a great big chap,” and -then he added cryptically, “pretty Scotch, I should say.”</p> - -<p class="tb">When dinner was over, the Doña went up to the -nursery to apologise, in case the children were still -awake, for not having been up before to say good-night. -She found they were asleep, however, but Nanny was -sitting in the day-nursery darning a jersey of Jasper’s; -so, partly to avoid having had the trouble of climbing -the stairs for nothing, partly because she had been -seeking for some time the occasion for a private chat, -she sank into the rocking-chair—looking extremely -distinguished in her black lace mantilla and velvet -gown.</p> - -<p>Her brown eyes, with the quizzical droop of the lids -that Teresa had inherited, fixed Nanny in a disconcerting -Spanish stare.</p> - -<p>How thankful she was that <i>she</i> did not have to wear -a gown of black serge fastening down her chest with -buttons, and a starched white cap.</p> - -<p>“I think the children have had a happy summer,” -she said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span></p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, madam. There’s nowhere like Plasencia—and -no one like Granny and Auntie!”</p> - -<p>There was a definite matter upon which the Doña -wanted information; but it required delicate handling. -She was on the point of approaching it by asking if the -children were not very lonely at Cambridge, but realising -that this would be a reflection upon Nanny she -immediately abandoned it—no one could deal more -cavalierly, when she chose, with the feelings of others -than the Doña; but she never <i>inadvertently</i> hurt a -fly.</p> - -<p>So what she said was, “I suppose Dr. Sinclair is -always very busy?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes—always working away at his stocks and -his chickens,” said Nanny placidly, holding a small -hole up to the light. “He’s managed to get that bit -of ground behind the garden, and he’s planted it with -nothing but stocks. He lets Anna help him with the -chickens. She’s becoming quite a little companion to -her Daddy.”</p> - -<p>“That is delightful,” purred the Doña; then, after -a pause, “He must be terribly lonely, poor man.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, he frets a lot, I’m sure; but, of course, -gentlemen don’t show it so much.”</p> - -<p>“Ah?” and there was a note of suppressed eagerness -in the interjection.</p> - -<p>Nanny began to feel uncomfortable.</p> - -<p>As dogs who live much with human beings develop -an agonising sensitiveness, so servants are apt to -develop from an intimacy with their masters a delicacy -and refinement of feeling often much greater than that -of the masters.</p> - -<p>At the bottom of her heart, she resented Dr. Sinclair’s -indifference to his children—at any rate, his indifference -to Jasper—for Anna, who was a remarkably -intelligent little girl, he rather liked. But with regard<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span> -to Jasper, he had once remarked to a crony at dinner -that, with the exception of the late Lord —— (naming -a famous man of science), his son was the greatest bore -he had ever met; which remark had been repeated by -the parlour-maid in a garbled version to the indignant -Nanny.</p> - -<p>Then, in decent mourning, a broken heart as well as -a crape band must be worn on the sleeve; Dr. Sinclair’s -sleeve was innocent of either, and it could not be denied -that within eight months of his wife’s death his voice -was as loud and cheerful, his eyes as bright, as ever -before.</p> - -<p>Yes; but it was quite another matter to be pumped, -even by “Granny,” or to admit to any one but her -own most secret heart that “Daddy” could, under -any circumstances, behave otherwise than as the model -of all the nursery virtues.</p> - -<p>There was a short silence; then the Doña said, -“Yes, poor man! It must be very dull for him. But -I suppose he is beginning to see his friends?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, madam, the College gentlemen sometimes -come to talk over his work with him,” and Nanny -pursed up her lips, and accelerated the speed with which -she was threading her needle through her warp. “It’s -a blessing, I’m sure,” she added, “that he has his work -to take off his thoughts sometimes.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, indeed!”; then, after a slight pause, “What -about that Miss—what was her name—the lady professor—Miss -Fyles-Smith? Is she still working with -Dr. Sinclair?”</p> - -<p>“I couldn’t say, madam, I’m sure. She was very -kind, taking the children on the river, and that—<i>when -Dr. Sinclair was away</i>.”</p> - -<p>The slight emphasis on the temporal clause did more -credit to Nanny’s heart than her head—considering -that the rapier she was parrying was wielded by the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span> -Doña; for it caused the Doña to say to herself, “Aha! -she knows what I mean, does she? There must be -something in it then.”</p> - -<p>However, this was loyal, faithful service, and the -Doña had an innate respect for the first-rate; but, -though honouring Nanny, she did not feel in the least -ashamed of herself.</p> - -<p>She changed the subject, and sat on, for a while, -chatting on safe, innocent topics.</p> - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>The Doña considered that no sand-dune, Turkish -divan, bank whereon the wild thyme blows, or Patriarch’s -bosom, could rival her own fragrant-sheeted, -box-spring-mattressed, eiderdowned bed; therefore she -went there early and lay there late. So on leaving -the nursery, although it was barely half-past nine, she -went straight to bed, and there she was soon established, -her face smeared with Crême Simon, with a Spanish -novel lying open on the quilt. But the comfort of -beds, as of all other things—even though they be -ponderable and made of wood and iron—is subject to -the capricious tyranny of dreams; and for some time, -in spite of the skill of Mr. Heal, the Doña’s bed had not -been entirely compact of roses.</p> - -<p>When, an hour or so later, Dick climbed into his bed, -she said, “I suppose you realise that Harry has forgotten -all about my Pepa?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, nonsense, Anna! Poor chap, you don’t expect -him to be always whimpering, do you? I tell you, the -English aren’t demonstrative.”</p> - -<p>“Nor are the Spaniards, but they have a great deal -of heart all the same; and Harry has absolutely none—I -don’t believe he has any soul either.”</p> - -<p>“So much the better then; he can’t be damned.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span></p> - -<p>This was an unusually acute and spiteful remark—for -Dick. The Doña had never confided to him her -vicarious terrors touching the apostasy of Pepa, who -had not had her children baptised, and, during her last -illness, had refused to the end the ministrations of Holy -Church; but one cannot pass many years in close -physical intimacy with another person without getting -an inkling, though it be only subconsciously, of that -person’s secret thoughts; and though Dick had never -consciously registered his knowledge of the Doña’s, the -above remark had been made with intention to wound.</p> - -<p>His irritation at her criticism of Harry was caused -by a sense of personal guilt: twice, perhaps, during -the last year had his own thoughts dwelt spontaneously -upon Pepa—certainly not oftener.</p> - -<p>With a sigh of relief he put out the light, shook -himself into a comfortable position, and then got into -the shadowy yacht in which every night he sailed towards -his dreams. With that tenderness of males -(which deserves the attention of the Freudians) towards -any vehicle—be it horse, camel, motor-car, or ship—he -knew and loved every detail of her equipment; and -in the improvements which, from time to time, he -made in her he observed a rigid realism—never, for -instance, making them unless they were justified by -the actual state of his bank-book. The only concession -that he made to pure fancy was that there was no -wife and children to be considered in making his budget. -On the strength of an unexpected dividend, he had -recently had her fitted out with a wireless installation. -The only guests were his life-long friend, Hugh Mallam, -and a pretty, though shadowy and somewhat Protean, -young woman.</p> - -<p>As to the Doña, she lay for hours staring with wide -eyes at the darkness. Why, oh why, had she married -a Protestant? Just to annoy her too vigilant aunts,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span> -for the sake of novelty and excitement she had, in spite -of her confessor, run off with a round-faced, unromantic -young Englishman—really unromantic, but for her -with the glamour that always hangs round hereditary -enemies. Perhaps she deserved to be punished: but -when they had been little she had been so sure of her -children—how could they ever be anything but her -own creatures, pliable to her touch? Even Arnold, -brought up a Protestant (he had been born before the -Bull exacting that all children of a mixed marriage -should be Catholics), she had been certain that, once -his own master, he would come over. She smiled as -she remembered how he used to say when he was at -school—as a joke—“Oh, yes, I’m going to be the Pope, -and I’ll have a special issue of stamps to be used in -the Vatican, then after a few days suppress ’em; so -I’ll have a corner in them!” And though he had -<i>not</i> come over to Rome, there was a certain relaxing of -tension as she thought of him; somehow or other, it -made it different his having been born before the Bull. -But Pepa—that was another thing: a member of the -Catholic fold from her infancy ... where could she -be now but in that portion of Purgatory which is outside -the sphere of influence of prayers and masses, and -which will one day be known as Hell? Before her -passed a series of realistic pictures of those torments, -imprinted on her imagination during <i>las semanas de los -ejerjicios espirituales</i> of her girlhood.</p> - -<p>Could it be?... No, it was impossible.... -Impossible? Pepa had died in mortal sin ... she -was there.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</h2> - -</div> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p>Arnold Lane and Guy Cust had been great friends at -Cambridge, in spite of having been at different colleges, -and having cultivated different poses.</p> - -<p>Guy, who was an Etonian, had gone in for intellectual -and sartorial foppishness, for despising feminine society, -for quoting “Mr. Pope” and “Mr. Gibbon,” and for -frequenting unmarried dons.</p> - -<p>Arnold had been less exclusive—had painted the -town a “greenery-yellow” with discalceated Fabians, -read papers on Masefield to the “Society of Pagans,” -and frequently played tennis at the women’s colleges; -he had also, rather shamefacedly, played a good deal of -cricket and football.</p> - -<p>Then, at the end of their last year, came the War, -and they had both gone to the front.</p> - -<p>The trenches had turned Arnold into an ordinary -and rather Philistine young man.</p> - -<p>As to Guy—he had undergone what he called a -conversion to the “amazing beauty of modern life,” -and, abandoning his idea of becoming a King’s don and -leading that peculiar existence which, like Balzac’s -novel, is a <i>recherche de l’Absolu</i> in a Dutch interior, -when the War was over he had settled in London, -where he tried to express in poetry what he called -“the modern mysticism”—that sense, made possible -by wireless and cables, of all the different doings of -the world happening <i>simultaneously</i>: London, music-halls, -Broad Street, Proust writing, people picking<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span> -oranges in California, mysterious processes of growth -or decay taking place in the million trees of the myriad -forests of the world, a Javanese wife creeping in and -stabbing her Dutch rival. One gets the sense a little -when at the end of <i>The Garden of Cyrus</i> Sir Thomas -Browne says: “The huntsmen are up in America -and they are already past their first sleep in Persia.” -Its finest expression, he said, was to be found in the -<i>Daily Mirror</i>.</p> - -<p>But early training and tastes are tenacious. We -used to be taught that, while we ought not to wish for -the palm without the dust, we should, nevertheless, -keep Apollo’s bays immaculate; and, in spite of their -slang, anacoluthons, and lack of metre, Guy’s poems -struck some people (Teresa, for instance) as being not -the bays but the aspidistras of Apollo—dusted by the -housemaid every morning.</p> - -<p>Towards five o’clock, the next day, their arrival -was announced by ’Snice excitably barking at -the front door, and by Concha—well, the inarticulate -and loud noises of welcome with which -Concha always greeted the return of her father, -brother, or friends, is also best described by the -word “barking.”</p> - -<p>“It’s a friendly gift; I’m sure no ‘true woman’ is -without it,” thought Teresa.</p> - -<p>Arnold had his father’s short, sturdy body and his -mother’s handsome head; Guy was small and slight, -with large, widely-opened, china-blue eyes and yellow -hair; he was always exquisitely dressed; he talked in -a shrill voice, always at a tremendous rate. They were -both twenty-seven years old.</p> - -<p>As usual, they had tea out on the lawn; the Doña -plying Arnold with wistful questions, in the hopes of -getting fresh material for that exact picture of his life -in London that she longed to possess, that, by its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span> -help, she might, in imagination, dog his every step, -hear each word he uttered.</p> - -<p>Up in the morning, say at eight (she hoped his landlady -saw that his coffee was hot), then at his father’s -office by nine, then ... but she never would be able -to grasp the sort of things men did in offices, then -luncheon—she hoped it was a good one (no one else -had ever had any fears of Arnold’s not always doing -himself well), then ... hazy outlines and details -which she knew were all wrong, and, in spite of the -many years she had spent in England, ridiculously like -the life of a young Spaniard in her youth ... no, -no, he would never begin his letters to young ladies -<i>ojos de mi corazon</i> (eyes of my heart)—they would be -more like this: Dear ——? Fed up. Have you read? -Cheerio! Amazing performance! Quite. Allow me -to remind you.... And then, perhaps, a Latin -quotation to end up. No, it was no use, she would -never be able to understand it all.</p> - -<p>“A Scotch protégé of Dad’s is coming to-night,” -said Concha; “he’ll probably travel down with Rory -Dundas—I wonder if they’ll get on ... oh, Guy, I -hadn’t noticed them before; what divine spats!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Lord!” groaned Arnold, “it’s that chap -Munroe, I suppose. Look here, I don’t come down here -so often, I think I might be left alone when I do, -Mother,” and he turned angrily to the Doña. It was -only in moments of irritation that he called her -“mother.”</p> - -<p>“And I think so, too. I <i>told</i> your father that you -would not be pleased.”</p> - -<p>“Well, of course, it’s come to this, that I’ll give up -coming home at all,” and he savagely hacked himself a -large slice of cake.</p> - -<p>A look of terror crept into the Doña’s eyes—her -children vanishing slowly, steadily, over the brow of a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span> -hill, while she stood rooted to the ground, was one of -her nightmares.</p> - -<p>Trying to keep the anger out of her voice, Teresa -said, “The last time you were here there were no -visitors at all, and the time before it was all your own -friends.”</p> - -<p>“Quite. But that is no reason....”</p> - -<p>“Poor angel!” cried Concha, plumping down on his -knee, “you’re like Harry, who used to say that he’d -call his house Yarrow that it might be ‘unvisited.’”</p> - -<p>Arnold grinned—the Boswellian possessive grin, -automatically produced in every Trinity man when a -sally of Dr. Sinclair’s was quoted.</p> - -<p>“How I love family quarrels! By the way, where’s -Mr. Lane?” said Guy.</p> - -<p>“Playing golf,” answered the Doña curtly.</p> - -<p>“The glorious life he leads! ‘The apples fall about -his head!’ He does lead an amazingly beautiful -life.”</p> - -<p>“‘<i>Beautiful</i>,’ Guy?” and the Doña turned on him -the look of pitying wonder his remarks were apt to -arouse in her.</p> - -<p>“Yes, successful, middle-aged business men,” cried -Guy excitedly, beginning to wave his hands up and -down, “they’re the only happy people ... they’re -like Keats’ Nightingale, ‘no hungry generations tread -them down, singing of....’”</p> - -<p>“I’m not so sure of that,” laughed Arnold. “We’re -certainly hungry, and we often trample on him—if -that’s what it means,” and, getting up, he yawned, -stretched himself, and, seizing the Doña’s hand, said, -“Come and show me the garden.”</p> - -<p>The Doña flushed with pleasure, and they strolled -off towards the border, whither they were shortly -followed by Concha.</p> - -<p>Teresa and Guy sat on by the tea-table.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span></p> - -<p>“I quite agree with you,” she said presently. “Dad’s -life <i>is</i> pleasant to contemplate. Somehow, he belongs -to this planet—he manages to be happy.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, you see he doesn’t try to pretend that he -belongs to a different scheme of evolution from beasts -and trees and things, and he doesn’t dream. Do you -think he ever thinks of his latter end?” and he gave a -little squeak of laughter.</p> - -<p>Teresa smiled absently, and for some seconds gazed -in silence at the view. Then she said, “Think of all -the things happening everywhere ... but there are -such gaps that we can’t feel the <i>process</i>—even in ourselves; -we can only register results and that isn’t living, -and it’s frightfully unæsthetic.”</p> - -<p>“But, my dear Teresa, that’s what <i>I’m</i> always -preaching!” cried Guy indignantly. “It’s exactly -this registering of results instead of living through -processes that is so frightful. In a poem you shouldn’t -say, ‘Hullo! There’s a lesser celandine!’ all ready-made, -you know; and then start moralising about it: -‘In its unostentatious performance of its duty it reminds -me of a Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman that I once knew’—you -know the sort of thing. In your poem the lesser -celandine should go through the whole process of -growth—and then it should wither and die.”</p> - -<p>“No, Guy; it can’t be done ... in music, perhaps, -but that’s so vague.”</p> - -<p>Guy felt a sudden sinking in his stomach: had he -not himself invented a technique to do this very thing? -He must find out at all costs what Teresa thought of -his poetry.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you think ...” he began nervously, “that -modern poetry is getting much nearer to—to—er—processes?”</p> - -<p>Teresa gave a little smile. So <i>that</i> was what it was -all leading up to? Was there no one with whom she<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span> -could discuss things simply and honestly for their own -sake?</p> - -<p>“Did you—er—ever by any chance read my poem -on King’s Cross?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. It was very good.”</p> - -<p>She felt tempted to add, “It reminded me a little bit -of Frith,” but she refrained. It would be very unkind -and really not true.</p> - -<p>Her praise, faint though it was, made Guy tingle all -over with pleasure, and he tumbled out, in one breath, -“Well, you see, it’s really a sort of trick (everything is). -Grammar and logic must be thrown overboard, and it’s -not that it’s easier to write without them, it’s much -more difficult; Monsieur Jourdain was quite wrong in -calling logic <i>rébarbative</i>; as a matter of fact, it’s damnably -easy and seductive—so’s grammar; the Song of -the Sirens was probably sung in faultless grammar ... -and anyhow, it spoils everything. Now, just think of -the most ridiculous line in the Prelude:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">... and negro ladies in white muslin gowns.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Don’t you see it’s entirely the fault of the conjunction -‘and’? Try it this way. Oranges, churches, cabriolets, -negro ladies in white muslin gowns.... It immediately -becomes as significant and decorative as Manet’s negro -lady is a white muslin gown in the Louvre—the one -offering a bouquet to Olympia.”</p> - -<p>He paused, and looked at her a little sheepishly, a -smile lurking in the corner of his eyes.</p> - -<p>“You’re too ridiculous,” laughed Teresa, “and -theories about literature, you know, are rather dangerous, -and allow me to point out that all the things -that ... well, that one perhaps regrets in poor Wordsworth, -whom you despise so much, that all these things -are the result of his main theory, namely, that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span> -everything is equally interesting and equally poetic. -While the other things—the incomparable things—happened -<i>in spite</i> of his theories.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes ... trudging over the moors through the -rain, and he’s sniffing because he’s lost his handkerchief, -and he’s thinking of tea—sent him by that chap in -India or China, what was his name? You know ... -the friend of Lamb’s—and of hot tea cakes.”</p> - -<p>Teresa gave her cool, superior smile. “Poor Guy! -You’ve got a complex about Wordsworth.”</p> - -<p>After a little pause, she went on, “Literature, I -think, ought to <i>transpose</i> life ... turn it into a new -thing. It has to come pushing up through all the -endless labyrinths of one’s mind—like catechumens in -the ancient Mysteries wandering through cave after -cave of strange visions, and coming out at the other -end new men. I mean ... oh, it’s so difficult to say -what I mean ... but one looks at—say, that view, -and the result is that one writes—well, the love story -of King Alfred, or ... a sonnet on a sun-dial. I -remember I once read a description by a psychologist -of the process that went on in the mind of a certain -Italian dramatist: he would be teased for months by -some abstract philosophical idea and gradually it -would turn itself into, and be completely lost in an -<i>action</i>—living men and women doing things. It seems -to me an extraordinarily beautiful process—really -creative.... Transubstantiation, that’s what it is -really; but the bad writers are like priests who haven’t -proper Orders—they can scream <i>hoc est corpus</i> till they -are hoarse, but nothing happens.”</p> - -<p>Guy had wriggled impatiently during this monologue; -and now he said, in a very small voice, “You ... -you <i>do</i> like my poetry, don’t you, Teresa?”</p> - -<p>She looked at him; of course, he deserved to be -slapped for his egotism and vanity, but his eager,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span> -babyish face was so ridiculous—like Jasper’s—and when -Jasper climbed on to the chest of drawers and shouted, -“Look at me, Teresa! <i>Teresa!</i> Look at me!” as -if he had achieved the ascent of Mount Everest, she -always feigned surprise and admiration.</p> - -<p>So, getting up, she said with a smile, “I think you’re -an amazingly brilliant creature, Guy—I do really. -Now I must go.”</p> - -<p>He felt literally intoxicated with gratification. “I -think you’re an amazingly brilliant creature; <i>I think -you’re an amazingly brilliant creature; an amazingly -brilliant creature</i>”—he sucked each word as if it were -a lollipop.</p> - -<p>Then, the way she affectionately humoured him—that -was the way women always treated geniuses: -geniuses were apt to seem a trifle ridiculous; probably -the impression he made on people was somewhat -similar to Swinburne’s.</p> - -<p>He got up and tripped across the lawn to a clump of -fuchsias.</p> - -<p>Yes; he had certainly been very brilliant with -Teresa: <i>the song of the sirens was, I am sure, in faultless -grammar; the song of the sirens was, I am sure, in faultless -grammar; the song of the</i> ... and how witty he -had been about the negro ladies!</p> - -<p>He really must read a paper on his own views on -poetry—to an audience mainly composed of women: -<i>The cultivated have, without knowing it, become the -Philistines, and, scorning the rude yet lovely Saturnalia -of modern life, have refused an angel the hospitality of -their fig-tree; Tartuffe, his long, red nose pecksniffing—the -day of the Puritans is over; but for the sake of the -Lady of Christ’s, let them enjoy undisturbed their domestic -paradise regained</i>; then all these subjects locked up so -long and now let loose by modern poetry ... yes, it -would go like this: <i>The harems have been thrown<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span> -open, and, though as good reactionaries we may -deplore the fact, yet common humanity demands that -we should lend a helping hand to the pretty lost -creatures in their embroidered shoes</i>; then, about -anacoluthons and so on; <i>surely one’s sentences need -not hold water if they hold the milk of Paradise</i>; oh, -yes ... of course ... and he would end up by -reading them a translation of Pindar’s first Olympian -Ode, ... Ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ ..., <i>and now, ladies and -gentlemen, which of you will dare to subscribe to Malherbe’s -‘ce galimatias de Pindare’?</i></p> - -<p>Loud applause; rows of indulgent, admiring, cultured -smiles—like the Cambridge ladies when the giver of the -Clark lectures makes a joke.</p> - -<p>“Guy! I have told you before, I will <i>not</i> have you -cracking the fuchsia buds.”</p> - -<p>It was the Doña, calling out from the border where, -deserted by Arnold but joined by Dick, she was examining -and commenting upon each blossom separately, in -the manner of La Bruyère’s amateur of tulips.</p> - -<p>“All right,” he called back in a small, weak voice, -and went up to say, “How d’ye do” to Dick.</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Guy! Been writing any more poetry?”</p> - -<p>This was Dick’s invariable greeting of him.</p> - -<p>Then he wandered off towards the house—a trifle -crestfallen. “<i>I think you’re an amazingly brilliant -creature.</i>” Yes; but wasn’t that begging the question, -the direct question he had asked whether she liked -his poetry? And one could be “an amazingly brilliant -creature,” and, at the same time, but an indifferent -writer. Marie Bashkirsteff, for instance, whose journal -he had come upon in an attic at home, mouldering away -between a yellow-backed John Strange Winter and a -<i>Who’s Who</i> of the nineties; no one could deny that -socially she must have been extremely brilliant, but, -to him, it had seemed incredible that the world should<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span> -have failed to perceive that her “self-revelations” -were to a large extent faked, and her imagination a -tenth-rate one. And now, both as painter and writer, -Time had shown her up, together with the other -<i>pompiers</i> whose work had made such a brave show -in the Salons of the eighties, or had received such -panegyrics in the <i>Mercure de France</i>.</p> - -<p>He felt sick as he thought of time, in fifteen years -... ten years ... having corroded the brilliant flakes -of contemporary paint, faded the arabesque of strange -words and unexpected thoughts, and revealed underneath -the grains of pounce.</p> - -<p>Brilliant ... there was Oscar Wilde, of course ... -but then, Oscar Wilde!</p> - -<p>He must find out what value exactly she attached to -brilliancy.</p> - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>It was past seven o’clock when Captain Roderick -Dundas and Mr. David Munroe drove up side by side -to Plasencia.</p> - -<p>If they did not find much to say to each other, the -fault was not Rory’s; for he was a friendly creature, -ready, as he put it, “to babble to any one at his grandmother’s -funeral.”</p> - -<p>In appearance he was rather like Guy, only much -taller. They had both inherited considerable prettiness -from their respective mothers—“the beautiful -Miss Brabazons,” whose beauty and high spirits had -made a great stir at their <i>début</i> in the eighties.</p> - -<p>As to David Munroe; he was a huge man of swarthy -complexion, slow of speech and of movement, and with -large, rather melancholy brown eyes.</p> - -<p>“Hullo! We must be arriving. Isn’t it terrifying<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span> -arriving at a new house? It’s like going to parties when -one was a child—‘are you sure there’s a clean pocket -handkerchief in your sporran, master Rory?’”</p> - -<p>David, turning a puzzled, rather suspicious, look upon -him, said slowly, “Are you Scotch?”</p> - -<p>“Lord, yes! I never get my ‘wills and shalls’ -right, and I talk about ‘table-maids’ and all sorts of -things. Here we are.”</p> - -<p>As they got into the hall, Guy and Arnold came out -from the billiard-room.</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Rory!” said Guy, “you can’t have a bath -before dinner because <i>I’m</i> going to have one.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll have to have it with Concha then, Guy,” -said Arnold, “she’s there regularly from seven till -eight. I wish to God this house had more bathrooms. -Hullo! You’ve got a paper, Dundas—I want to see -the latest news about the Strike.”</p> - -<p>In the meanwhile, David Munroe stood in the background, -looking embarrassed and rather sulky, and -Rendall, the butler, who secretly deplored “Mr. -Arnold’s” manners, said soothingly, “I’ll have your -bag taken up to your room, sir.” Whereupon Arnold -looked up from the paper, greeted him with sullen -excuses, took him up to his room, and hurriedly -left him.</p> - -<p>Half an hour later David walked into the drawing-room, -forlorn and shy, in full evening dress. All the -party, except Rory, were already assembled, and he -felt still more uncomfortable when in a flash he -realised that the other men were in dinner-jackets and -black ties.</p> - -<p>“Ah! How are you, Munroe?” cried Dick heartily, -“very pleased to see you. So sorry I wasn’t there -when you arrived—didn’t hear the car. Let me -introduce you to my wife.”</p> - -<p>“How do you do, Mr. Munroe. How clever of you<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span> -to be dressed in time!” said the Doña. There was -always a note of irony in her voice, and it was confirmed -by the myopic contraction of her eyes; so -David imagined, quite erroneously, that she was “having -a dig” at his tails and white waistcoat. Nor did Dick -improve matters by saying, “I say, Munroe, you put -us all to shame.”</p> - -<p>Then Rory came in, so easily, chattering and laughing -as if he had known them all his life—also in a dinner-jacket -and a black tie; because, if poor David had only -known, Arnold had told him it was “just a family party -and he needn’t bother about tails.”</p> - -<p>The moment Rory had entered the room, Teresa -had felt a sudden little contraction of her throat, and -had almost exclaimed aloud, “At last!”</p> - -<p>In their childhood, she and Pepa had dreamed of, -and craved for, a man doll, made of some supple material -which would allow of its limbs being bent according to -their will, its face modelled and painted with a realism -unknown to the toy shops, a little fair moustache of -real hair that could be twisted, and real clothes that, -of course, came off and on: waistcoat, tie, collar, -braces, and in a pocket a little gold watch.</p> - -<p>Their longing for this object had, at one time, become -an obsession, and had reached the point of their regarding -living men entirely from the point of view of whether, -shrunk to twelve inches high, they would make a good -doll.</p> - -<p>So Teresa, who had so often deplored the childishness -of her friends and family, actually found herself gazing -with gloating eyes at Rory Dundas—the perfect man -doll, found at last.</p> - -<p>Then they went into dinner. Guy took in Teresa; -he was nervous, and more talkative than usual, and -she was unusually <i>distraite</i>.</p> - -<p>The room grew hot; every one seemed to be talking<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span> -at once—screaming about the <i>Fifth Form at St. Dominics</i>, -or <i>Black Beauty</i>, or both. It seemed that Arnold, -when he was at Rugby, had exchanged one or both with -Concha for a Shakespeare, illustrated by photographs -of leading actors and actresses, and that he wanted -them back.</p> - -<p>“Ah! he is thinking of his own children. Does it -mean ... can he be going to ...?” thought the -Doña, delighted at the thought of the children, frightened -at the thought of the wife.</p> - -<p>“You must certainly give them back to Arnold, -Concha; they’re his,” she said firmly.</p> - -<p>“I like that! When he got such an extremely good -bargain, too! He always did in his deals with me.”</p> - -<p>“Anna has a <i>Black Beauty</i>, you might wangle it out -of her by offering to teach her carpentry or something -... something she could get a new badge for in the -Girl Guides.”</p> - -<p>“But it’s my own copy that I want.”</p> - -<p>And so on, what time Dick at the foot of the table -shook like a jelly with delighted laughter.</p> - -<p>Nothing makes parents—even detached ones like -Dick—so happy as to see their grown-up offspring -behaving like children.</p> - -<p>“English hospitality is to <i>make</i> you at home—a -pistol at your head; look at the poor Scot!” said Guy -to Teresa.</p> - -<p>She had been trying to hear what Rory was saying -to Concha about the latest <i>Revue</i>, and, looking absently -across at the silent, aloof David, said vaguely, “Oh, yes -of course; he’s Scotch, isn’t he?”</p> - -<p>“Inverness-shire, I should think. They’ve got a -special accent there—not Scotch, but a sort of genteel -English. It’s rather frightening, like suddenly coming -upon a pure white tribe in the heart of Darkest Africa, -it....”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span></p> - -<p>Teresa heard no more, but yielded to the curious -intoxication produced by half a glass of claret, the din -of voices, and the hot and brightly lighted room.</p> - -<p>By some mysterious anomaly, its action was definitely -Apolline, as opposed to Dionysiac—suddenly lifting her -from the Bacchic rout on the stage to the marble throne -of spectator.</p> - -<p>David Munroe, too, sitting silent by the Doña, -happened to be feeling it also.</p> - -<p>It seemed to him as if the oval mahogany table, on -which the lights glinted and the glasses rattled, and all -the people sitting round it, except himself, suddenly -became an entity, which tore itself away from surrounding -phenomena like the launching of a ship, perhaps....</p> - -<p>And at that very moment, “the dark Miss Lane” -was saying to herself, “It’s like the beginning of the -<i>Symposium</i>, which seems at first clumsy and long-winded, -but by which the real thing—the Feast—is -shifted further and further, first to the near past, and -then to years and years ago, when they were all children, -in the days when Agathon was still in Athens and was -making his sacrifice for his victory at the dramatic -contest; pushing the rôle of eyewitness through a -descending scale of remoteness—from Apollodorus to -Phœnix, the son of Philip, from Phœnix to ‘one Aristodemus, -a Cydathenæan,’ till finally It—the Feast, -small, compact, and far-away—disentangles itself from -Space and Time and floats off to the stars, like a fire-balloon, -while Apollodorus and his friend, standing -down there in the streets of Athens, stare up at it with -dazzled eyes.”</p> - -<p>“I say, Teresa, I was wondering ... I was thinking -of writing an article on ‘the men of the nineties’—do -you think I should be justified in calling Oscar Wilde -‘brilliant’?”</p> - -<p>Teresa, still bemused, gazed at Guy with puzzled<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span> -eyes. Why on earth was he looking so odd and self-conscious?</p> - -<p>“Brilliant? Yes; I suppose so. Why?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t know. I was just wondering....”</p> - -<p>But the Doña was getting up, and the men were left -to their port.</p> - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Dick moved his chair beside David’s, and talked to -him a little about the prospects of sugar, and whether the -Cuban planters were going to “down” all the others; -but, finding him unresponsive, he turned eagerly to -Arnold, saying, “I say! I lunched with Paget-Clark -the other day, and he told me this year’s Rugby fifteen -will be one of the strongest we’ve ever had. There’s a -chap called Girdlestone who, they say, is a perfect -genius as half-back, and they’ve got a new beak -who’s an international and a marvellous coach. He -says....”</p> - -<p>“Anyhow, their eleven was jolly good this year. They -did extraordinary well at Lord’s.” There was a slightly -reproving note in Arnold’s voice, as if it were sacrilege -to talk about football when one might talk about -cricket. As a matter of fact, he was much more interested -in football, but he resented that his father -should be able to give him any information about -Rugby.</p> - -<p>David smiled to himself as he thought of his own -school—the Inverness Academy.</p> - -<p>They had thought themselves very “genteel” with -their school colours and their Latin song beginning:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Floreat Academia</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mater alma, mater pia.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span></p> - -<p class="noindent">And indeed this gentility had been rubbed into them -every morning on their way to school by bare-footed -laddies, who shouted after them:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Gentry puppies, ye’re no verra wice,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ye eat your parritch wi’ bugs an’ lice.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“I doubt it wouldn’t seem very genteel to them,” -he thought, without, however, a trace of bitterness.</p> - -<p>They began to talk about the prospects of the Cambridge -Boat, and Guy, who prided himself on being -able to talk knowledgeably on such matters, eagerly -joined in with aphorisms on “form.”</p> - -<p>“I say, Munroe, we’re nowhere in this show, are -we?” said Rory, with a friendly grin; then suddenly -remembering that he had no legitimate cause for -assuming that David was not a University man (Rory -prided himself on his tact), he added hastily, “mere -sodgers like you and me.”</p> - -<p>“I—I understand that the late Dr. Arnold sent his -son to Oxford instead of Cambridge, because—because -at the latter University they didn’t study Aristotle,” -said David.</p> - -<p>He genuinely wanted to know about this, because -recently his own thoughts—by way of St. Thomas -Aquinas—had been very much occupied with Aristotle; -but, being shy, his voice sounded aggressive.</p> - -<p>“Arnold <i>would</i>,” said the other Arnold coldly.</p> - -<p>“But—but Dr. Arnold was surely a great man, -wasn’t he?”</p> - -<p>This time David’s voice was unmistakably timid.</p> - -<p>The others exchanged smiles.</p> - -<p>“Was he? That’s the question,” said Arnold.</p> - -<p>A few years ago Dick would have had no hesitation -in exclaiming indignantly, “A great man? I should -just think he <i>was</i>!” Why, he had called his only son<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span> -after him, in spite of the Doña’s marked preference for -Maria-José. But recently his children had insisted on -his reading a small biography of Dr. Arnold that has -since become a classic; very unwillingly had he complied, -as he had expected it to be like Carlyle’s <i>Heroes -and Hero-Worship</i>, which his sister, Joanna, had made -him read in his youth, and which he had secretly loathed; -but he had been pleasantly surprised, and had found -himself at the end in complete agreement with the -writer.</p> - -<p>One of Dick’s virtues was an open mind.</p> - -<p>“Well, <i>I</i> think old Arnold was quite right,” laughed -Rory. “I’m sure it’s most awfully important to -read ... who did you say, Munroe? Aristotle? -Fancy not reading Aristotle! Rotten hole, Cambridge!”</p> - -<p>David grinned with such perfect good-nature at this -chaff, that the atmosphere perceptibly warmed in his -favour.</p> - -<p>“Oh, well; I dare say there’s a good deal to be said -for Oxford,” said Dick magnanimously.</p> - -<p>“Oh, of course! Oxford shoes; Morris-Cowley -cars, summing up the whole of the Oxford movement -... namely, Cowley Fathers and the Preraphaelites!” -shrieked Guy.</p> - -<p>“Boar’s Hill!” screamed back Arnold.</p> - -<p>“Or the ‘Oxford’—the music-hall, you know,” -suggested Rory.</p> - -<p>Then port wine began to come into its own.</p> - -<p>There is a certain type of story with but little plot -and the crudest psychology, to appreciate which—as -in the case of the highest poetry—one must have a -love of <i>words</i>—for their own sake.</p> - -<p>“... and she thought the toast was ‘<i>Church</i> and -Birmingham’!” ended Guy in a shrill scream.</p> - -<p>Rory and Arnold chuckled; Dick shook convulsively, -and a little sheepishly. After all, he <i>was</i> much older<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span> -than the others; besides, he was afraid that his plate -might slip down. He was very fond of his plate, and -much enjoyed clicking it into place, like the right piece -in a jig-saw puzzle; nevertheless, he would die of -humiliation if it slipped down before Arnold.</p> - -<p>Story followed story; with each one, the laughter -growing louder and more satyr-like (even David was -smiling gravely); and it was on the best of terms that -the five entered the billiard-room, where, if there were -men, it was the custom at Plasencia to assemble after -dinner.</p> - -<p>Arnold immediately organised a game of Snooker -between Dick, Concha, Rory, Guy, and himself; and -the Doña, who was not completely free from a social -conscience, invited David to come and sit beside her -on the sofa.</p> - -<p>What on earth was she going to talk to him about? -It had been difficult enough at dinner. Ah, of course! -There was always the War; though there were few -subjects that bored her more.</p> - -<p>Though she was as ignorant as the Australian aborigines -of the world’s organisation and configuration, and -of the natural and economic laws by which it is governed, -yet, like an exceptionally gifted parrot, she was -able to manipulate the current <i>clichés</i>, with considerable -tact and dexterity.</p> - -<p>For instance, on her annual visit to Wales, she would -say, quite correctly, “Snowdon is very clear to-day, -isn’t it?” And that, though she had not the slightest -idea which of the many peaks on the horizon happened -to be called Snowdon.</p> - -<p>Nor did she ever talk about a <i>barrage</i> in connection -with motor-cars, or a <i>carboretto</i> in connection with -guns; though, if asked to define these two words, she -would have been hard put.</p> - -<p>So David talked about the War, and she purred or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span> -sighed or smiled, as the occasion required, and did not -listen to a word.</p> - -<p>She noticed that Guy’s eyes kept wandering towards -the chair where Teresa sat motionless. Well, <i>he</i>, at -any rate, had always preferred Teresa to Concha. <i>Why -was she jealous of Concha?</i> It must be Concha’s beauty -that was the trouble.... Teresa, of course, was more -distinguished looking, but Concha was like a Seville -<i>Purissima</i>—infinitely more beautiful.</p> - -<p>On and on went David’s voice; Concha, looking -across from the billiard-table, whispered to Arnold, -“<i>No one</i> talks so much really as a ‘strong, silent -man.’”</p> - -<p>“Yes; it was a queer time—the War. Things -happened then that people had come to look upon as -impossible—as old wives’ tales. But you’ll hardly -meet a fellow who has been through the War who -hasn’t either himself had some queer sort of experience, -or else had a chum who has. It was a queer time ... -there—there ... were things....”</p> - -<p>“Be a sportsman—double the black!” shouted Rory -from the billiard-table.</p> - -<p>Teresa, sitting silent in her corner, found herself -muttering:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Old ditties sigh about their fathers’ graves;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Round every spot where trod Apollo’s foot;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where long ago a giant battle was....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Jollypot looked up eagerly from her crochet and said:</p> - -<p>“Oh, do tell us more about it, Mr. Munroe.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, well, it’s only that at times like these ... -things are more ... more naked, maybe,” and he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span> -laughed apologetically. Then he added, as if to himself, -“One sees the star.”</p> - -<p>Jollypot murmured something inaudible, and her -eyes filled with sympathetic tears; she was not certain -of what he meant, but was sure it was something beautiful -and mystical.</p> - -<p>The Doña wondered if he had had shell-shock.</p> - -<p>But Teresa turned in her chair and scrutinised him. -What exactly did he mean? Not, she felt sure, what -she herself would have meant, if she had used these -words, namely, that, during the five years of the War, -one had been continually, or so it seemed in retrospect, -in that Apolline state of intoxication into which she -had fallen that very night at dinner; no, not quite the -same; for that had been purely Apolline, while during -the War it had been at once Apolline and Dionysiac, in -that it was oneself that one was looking at from these -cool heights—oneself, a blind, deaf, dusty maniac, -whirling in a dance.</p> - -<p>And, if one liked, one might call such times “heliacal -periods”—a time when the star is visible ... whatever -the star may be.</p> - -<p>But David, she felt sure, meant something concrete.</p> - -<p>“Now, then, Concha, cut that red and come back on -the blue ... ve-e-ry pree ... oh, hard luck!”</p> - -<p>“Now, then ... all eyes on Captain Dundas!... -Captain Dundas pots the black. Well, a very good -game.”</p> - -<p>Whereupon the Snooker party broke up; the men -wriggling into their dinner-jackets, and Concha standing -by the gramophone and swaying up and down as -she hummed the latest jazz tune.</p> - -<p>Guy came up to Teresa. “About Oscar Wilde—I do -want to have a talk to you about him. Do you think—well, -brilliancy—it has a certain literary value, don’t -you think?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span></p> - -<p>“Yes; I suppose so,” she answered absently; she -was watching Concha and Rory giggling by the gramophone.</p> - -<p>“Well, <i>I</i> am going to bed,” said the Doña, and, -kissing her hand to Arnold, who was still knocking -about the balls, she left the room, followed by Jollypot.</p> - -<p>“Well, that was a very successful game,” said Dick.</p> - -<p>“What about another one? You’ve <i>got</i> to play -this time, Munroe.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, another game. I’ve never seen a game of -Snooker over so quickly ... owing to the amazing -brilliance of our Captain Dundas,” cried Arnold.</p> - -<p>So they started another game, this time including -David; and as it had been decided that Rory was too -good for parlour-billiards, he sat down on the sofa -beside Teresa.</p> - -<p>They began to talk—about the War, of course: -all the old platitudes—the “team-spirit,” for instance. -“It’s football, you know, that makes us good fighters. -It’s about the only thing we learn at school—the team-spirit. -It teaches us to sacrifice stunts and showy -play and that sort of thing to the whole.”</p> - -<p>Then there was the Horse. “It’s extraordinary -how chivalry and ... and ... decent behaviour ... -and everything should be taught us by that old creature -with his funny, long face—but it’s true all the same. -It’s only because we use horses so little in fighting now -that ‘frightfulness’ has begun.”</p> - -<p>Teresa felt disappointed; but, after all, what had -she expected?</p> - -<p>“But it was a funny time—the old War. All these -tunes—rag-times and Violet Lorraine’s songs—hearing -them first at the Coliseum or Murray’s, and then on -one’s gramophone in the trenches ... it gave one a -feeling ... I don’t know!” and he broke off with a -laugh.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span></p> - -<p>“I know! Tunes ... it is very queer,” murmured -Teresa.</p> - -<p>It struck her with a stab of amusement that her -tone of reverent sympathy was rather like Jollypot’s—always -agog to encourage any expression of the pure -and poetical spirit that she was sure was burning in -every young male bosom.</p> - -<p>“Yes, it <i>was</i> ... an extraordinary time—for all of -us; but for you in the trenches! And all that death—I’ve -often wondered about that; how did it strike you?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, well, that was nothing new to <i>me</i>—I mean -some people hadn’t realised till the War that there was -such a thing; but my old Nanny died when I was nine—and -then, there was my mother.”</p> - -<p>He paused; and then in quite a different tone he -said:</p> - -<p>“Did it used to scare you stiff when you were a child -if you heard the clock strike midnight?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, <i>yes</i>—did it you?”</p> - -<p>“Rather. And could you scare yourself stiff by -staring at your own reflection in a mirror?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, <i>yes</i>.”</p> - -<p>They laughed.</p> - -<p>But Teresa felt the presence of the angel Intimacy—a -presence which, when it comes between a man and a -woman, shuffles the dreams and, so it seems, causes -the future to stir in its sleep.</p> - -<p>“I say! Isn’t this extraordinary? We <i>are</i> getting -on well, aren’t we? One doesn’t often talk to a person -about these sort of things the first time one meets -them,” and Rory gave a light, mocking laugh.</p> - -<p>Teresa felt absurdly, exaggeratedly disappointed; -and why did he use such a strongly scented hair-wash?</p> - -<p>The second game of Snooker came to an end, David, -this time, potting the black.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span></p> - -<p>“Well, Munroe, what about a ‘wee doch-an-doris’?” -said Dick, opening the tantalus.</p> - -<p>Concha stretched her soft, supple mouth in an -enormous yawn, rubbed her head on Dick’s shoulder, -and said, “Dad always talks to the Irish in a brogue -and to the Scotch like Harry Lauder—it’s <i>his</i> joke.”</p> - -<p>“And theirs, I suppose, is to answer in English,” -said Rory, getting up from the sofa and merging at -once into the atmosphere of the Snookerites.</p> - -<p>Teresa wondered if it were consciously that Concha -was always more affectionate to their father when she -had strange men for an audience. Then, seeing in -Guy’s eye that he wanted to continue his idiotic talk -about Oscar Wilde and brilliance, she slipped away to -bed.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</h2> - -</div> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p>The next morning Teresa dressed very carefully; she -put on a lilac knitted gown, cut square and low at the -neck, and a long necklace of jade.</p> - -<p>She got down to breakfast to find Arnold, Jollypot, -Rory, and Guy already settled.</p> - -<p>Rory looked at her with unseeing eyes, and got her -her tea and boiled egg with obviously perfunctory -politeness.</p> - -<p>He was clearly eager to get back to the conversation -with Guy which she had interrupted by her arrival and -needs.</p> - -<p>“But you know, Guy, the only <i>amusing</i> relation we -had was old Lionel Fane—he was a <i>priceless</i> old boy -... what was it he used to say again when he was -introduced to a lady?”</p> - -<p>“‘How d’ye do, how d’ye do, oh beautiful passionate -body that never has ached with a heart!’ And then, -do you remember how he used to turn down his sock -and scratch his ankle, and then look round with a -grin and say, ‘I don’t mean to be provocative.’ ...”</p> - -<p>“He <i>was</i> priceless! And then....”</p> - -<p>“For God’s sake stop talking about your beastly -relations,” growled Arnold; but Guy went on, undaunted.</p> - -<p>“But the person I should have liked to have been -was my mother or yours when they were young—their -portraits by Richmond hanging in the Academy with -a special policeman and roped off from the crowd—and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span> -that in the days of the Jersey Lily, too! Oh, it -would have been glorious to have been a beauty of -the eighties.”</p> - -<p>“Yes; but one might as well have gone the whole -hog, you know—been the Prince of Wales’s mistress, -and that sort of thing. Your mother, of course, didn’t -make such a very bad match, but mine—a miserable -younger son of a Scotch laird! I mean, I think they -might have done a lot better for themselves.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Lord! Let’s start a conversation about <i>our</i> -relations, Teresa. Edward Lane, now ...” said -Arnold.</p> - -<p>But he could not down the shrill scream of Guy, -once more taking up the tale: “Well, they weren’t, -of course, so cinemaish as the Sisters Gunning, for -instance ... but still, it was all rather amusing ... -and all these queer Victorian stunts they invented....”</p> - -<p>“Kicking off their shoes in the middle of a reel, and -that sort of thing? Uncle Jimmy says there was -quite a little war in Dublin as to which was the belle of -the Royal Hospital Ball, then afterwards, too, in -Scotland at the Northern Meeting....”</p> - -<p>“I should have liked to have seen them driving -with Ouida in Florence—the Italians saying, <i>bella, -bella</i>, when they passed them, and Ouida graciously -bowing and taking it as a tribute to herself.”</p> - -<p>“I <i>know</i>! And then they....”</p> - -<p>Then Concha strolled in, and Rory immediately -broke off his sentence, jumped up eagerly, and cried, -“Grant and Cockburn, please—four buttons, lilac.”</p> - -<p>“What’s all this about?” said Arnold.</p> - -<p>“Oh! I bet her a pair of spats last night that I’d -be down to breakfast before her. Tea or coffee? I -say, I suddenly remembered in the middle of the night -the name of that priceless book I was telling you about;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span> -it’s <i>Strawberry Leaves</i>, by A. Leaf—I’ll try to get it -for you.”</p> - -<p>Evidently the “angel Intimacy” had been very busy -last night after Teresa had gone to bed.</p> - -<p>Then the Doña appeared—to the surprise of her -daughters, as she generally breakfasted in her room.</p> - -<p>Her appearance was a protest. Dick had decided -(most unnecessarily, she considered) to have a cold -and a day in bed.</p> - -<p>Her eye immediately fell on Teresa, and in a swift, -humorous glance from top to toe she took in all the -details of her toilette.</p> - -<p>“Thank you very much, but I prefer helping myself,” -she said curtly to Rory; his attentiveness seemed -to her a direct reflection on Arnold, who never waited -on any one. Nor did she encourage his attempts at -conversation. “I have been telling Miss Concha....” -“I do hope you’ll take me round the garden—I know -all about that sort of thing, I do really.”</p> - -<p>It was a superb day, and the sun was beating fiercely -on the tightly-shut windows; the room smelt of -sausages and bacon and tea and soap and hair-wash. -Teresa felt that the sight of the pulpy eviscera of -Arnold’s roll would soon make her sick.</p> - -<p>“By the way, where’s the Scot?” said Concha. -“Arnold, hadn’t you better go up and find him?”</p> - -<p>A scuffling was heard behind the door, and in burst -Anna and Jasper, having, in spite of Nanny, simply -scrambled through their nursery breakfast, as thrilled -as ’Snice himself by the smell of new people. Jasper -was all wriggling and squeaking in his desire for -attention; Anna, outwardly calmer, was wondering -whether Rory had relations abroad, and whether they -wrote to him, and what the stamps on the envelopes -were like.</p> - -<p>“Now then, gently, darlings, gently! Wait a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span> -minute; here you are, Jasper,” and the Doña held -out to him a spoonful of honey.</p> - -<p>“But where is our good Scot?” repeated Concha.</p> - -<p>“The worst of going up to Cambridge is that one -never goes down,” shouted Guy to Jollypot, for want -of a better audience; whereupon, regardless of the -fact that Guy was still talking, Jollypot began to repeat -to herself in a low, emotional voice:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Does the road wind uphill all the way?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Yes, to the very end.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">From morn to night, my friend.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Jasper began to wriggle worse than ever, and, having -first cast a furtive glance at his grandmother and -aunts, said shrilly, “I dreamt of Mummie last night -... and she had ... she had ... such a funny -nose....” and his voice tailed off in a little giggle, -half proud, half guilty.</p> - -<p>“Jasper!” exclaimed simultaneously the Doña, -Teresa, Concha, and Anna, in tones of shocked reproval.</p> - -<p>“Dear little man!” murmured Jollypot.</p> - -<p>Shortly after her death, Jasper had genuinely dreamt -that his mother was standing by his bed, and, on telling -it next morning, had produced a most gratifying impression; -but so often had he tried since to produce -the same impression in the same way that to say he -had “dreamt of Mummie” had become a recognised -form of “naughtiness”; and, as one could attract -attention by naughtiness as well as by pathos, he continued -at intervals to announce that he had “dreamt -of Mummie.”</p> - -<p>“Concha, Teresa, Jollypot! We must hurry. The -car will soon be here to take us to mass,” said the -Doña.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span></p> - -<p>Concha hesitated a moment—Teresa’s eye was on -her—then said to herself, “I’ll <i>not</i> be downed by her,” -and aloud, “I don’t think I’m coming this morning, -Doña.”</p> - -<p>The Doña raised her eyebrows; Teresa’s face was -sphinx-like.</p> - -<p>At that moment in walked David—looking a little -embarrassed.</p> - -<p>He gravely faced the friendly sallies; and then he -said, with an evident effort:</p> - -<p>“No; I didn’t sleep in, its ... I’ve been to early -mass.”</p> - -<p>“Walked?” exclaimed Arnold. “Lord!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Mr. Munroe, I’m so sorry!” cried the Doña, -“you should have told me last night ... you see, I -didn’t know you were a Catholic.”</p> - -<p>“I bet you don’t know what ‘to sleep in’ means,” -Rory whispered to Concha.</p> - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>“Why didn’t you tell me Mr. Munroe was a Catholic?” -said the Doña as she was putting on her things for -mass.</p> - -<p>“How could I have told you when I didn’t know -myself?” answered Dick from his bed.</p> - -<p>“Well, he is, anyhow ... and what we’re going to -do with him to-day with you in bed ... it’s very odd, -every time you invite any one down who isn’t your -precious Hugh Mallam or one of your other cronies -you seem to catch a cold. Poor Dick, you won’t be -able to play golf to-morrow!” and with this parting -thrust the Doña left the room.</p> - -<p>But Dick was too comfortable to be more than -momentarily ruffled.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span></p> - -<p>There he lay: bathed, shaved, and wrapped in an -old padded dressing-jacket of the Doña’s (sky-blue, -embroidered in pink flowers), which he had surreptitiously -rescued from a jumble sale, against his own colds.</p> - -<p>At the foot of the bed snored ’Snice, at his elbow -stood a siphon and a long glass into which four or -five oranges had been squeezed, and before him lay a -delicious day—no Church (“I say, Dick! That’s the -treat that <i>never</i> palls!” Hugh Mallam used to say), -an excellent luncheon brought up on a tray, then a -sleep, then tea, then, say, a game of Bézique with little -Anna ... but the best thing of all that awaited him -was a romance of the Secret Service.</p> - -<p>He put on his eyeglasses and glanced through the -headings of the chapters: <i>Mr. ?</i>; <i>A Little Dinner at -the Savoy</i>; <i>The Freckled Gentleman Takes a Hand</i>; -<i>Double Bluff</i>.</p> - -<p>Yes; it promised well. It was always a good sign -if the chapters took their headings from the language -of Poker.</p> - -<p>With a little sigh of content he began to read. Had -he but known it, it was a most suitable exercise for a -Sunday morning; for, in the true sense of the word, it -was a profoundly religious book.</p> - -<p>On and on he read.</p> - -<p>The bedroom, unused to denizens at midday, seemed, -in its exquisite orderliness, frozen into a sedate reserve. -The tide of life had left it very clean and glistening and -still: not a breath rustled the pink cretonne curtains; -the autumn roses in a bowl on the dressing-table might -have been made of alabaster; the ornaments on the -mantelpiece stood shoulder to shoulder without a -smile at their own incongruity—a small plaster cast of -Montañes’ <i>Jesùs del Gran Poder</i> beside a green china -pig with a slit in its back, which had once held the -savings of the little Lanes; with an equal lack of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span> -self-consciousness, an enlarged photograph of Arnold -straddling in the pads of a wicket-keeper hung on the -wall beside an engraving in which the Virgin, poised -in mid-air, was squeezing from her breast a stream of -luminous milk into the mouth of a kneeling monk; -and everywhere—from among the scent-bottles on the -dressing-table, beside a chromograph of Cadiz on the -wall—everywhere smiled the lovely face of Pepa.</p> - -<p>’Snice stirred at his feet, and, laying down his book, -Dick dragged his smooth, brown, unresisting length to -the top of the bed.</p> - -<p>A member of his Club, who was an eminent physician -was always talking about the importance of “relaxing.” -“Pity he can’t see ’Snice,” thought Dick, as he lifted -one of the limp paws, then, letting go, watched it -heavily flop down on to the counterpane. “’Snice! -’Snice!” he repeated to himself; and then began to -chuckle, as, for the thousandth time, he realised the -humour of the name.</p> - -<p>“’Snice,” meaning “it’s nice,” had been the catch-word -at the Pantomime one year; and Arnold or -Concha or some one had decided that that was what -Fritz, as he was then called, was constantly trying to -say; so, in time, ’Snice had become his name.</p> - -<p>Yes, they certainly were very amusing, his children; -he very much enjoyed their jokes. But recently it had -been borne in upon him that they did not care so very -much about his. He often felt <i>de trop</i> in the billiard-room—his -own billiard-room; especially when Arnold -was at home.</p> - -<p>He suddenly remembered how bored he and Hugh -Mallam used to be by his own father’s jokes—or, -rather, puns; and those quotations of his! Certain -words or situations would produce automatically -certain quotations; for instance, if his austere and ill-favoured -wife or daughter revoked at Whist, it would<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span> -be, “When lovely woman stoops to folly!” And, -unfortunately, his partner’s surname was Hope; unfortunately, -because every time one of them said, -“Mr. Hope told me so,” it would be, “Hope told a -flattering tale.”</p> - -<p>But surely he, Dick, wasn’t as tedious as that? He -rarely made a pun, and never a quotation; nevertheless, -he did not seem to amuse his children.</p> - -<p>Good Lord! He would be fifty-seven his next birthday—the -age his father was when he died. It seemed -incredible that he, “Little Dickie,” should be the age -of his own father.</p> - -<p>Damn them! Damn them! He didn’t <i>feel</i> old—and -that was the only thing that mattered.</p> - -<p>He stuck out his chin obstinately, put on his eyeglasses -again, and, returning to his novel, was very -soon identified, once more, with the hero, and hence—inviolate, -immortal, taboo. Whether hiding in the -bracken, or lurking, disguised, in low taverns of Berlin, -what had he to fear? For how could revolvers, -Delilahs, aeroplanes, all the cunning of Hell or the -Wilhelm Strasse, prevail against one who is knit from -the indestructible stuff of shadows and the dreams of a -million generations? He belonged to that shadowy -Brotherhood who, before Sir Walter had given them -names and clothed them in flesh, had hunted the red -deer, and followed green ladies, in the Borderland—not -of England and Scotland, but of myth and poetry. -As Hercules, he had fought the elements; as Mithras, -he had hidden among the signs of the Zodiac; as -Osiris, he had risen from the dead.</p> - -<p>No; the hero of these romances cannot fall, for if -he fell the stars would fall with him, the corn would not -grow, the vines would wither, and the race of man -would become extinct.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span></p> - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Rory Dundas, being a capricious young man, devoted -himself, that morning, not to Concha, but to Anna and -Jasper.</p> - -<p>After he had been taken to scratch the backs of the -pigs, and to eat plums in the orchard, Anna proposed a -game of clock-golf.</p> - -<p>“Are you coming to play?” they called out from the -lawn to Concha, Arnold, and David, who were sitting -in the loggia.</p> - -<p>“No, we’re not!” called back Arnold.</p> - -<p>Concha would have liked very much to have gone; -first, because it seemed a pity to have incurred for -nothing Teresa’s stare and the Doña’s raised eyebrows; -second, because she had been finding it uphill work to -keep Arnold civil, and David in the conversation. But -her childhood’s habit of docility to Arnold had become -automatic, so she sat on in the loggia.</p> - -<p>“I think, maybe, I’ll go and try my hand ... -they seem nice wee kiddies,” said David, and he got up, -in his slow, deliberate way, and strolled off towards -the party on the lawn.</p> - -<p>“Kiddies!” exclaimed Arnold in a voice of disgust, -when he was out of ear-shot. “The Scotch always -seem to use the wrong slang.”</p> - -<p>“You’re getting as fussy as Teresa,” laughed Concha.</p> - -<p>“Oh, if it comes to that, she needn’t think she’s the -only person with a sense of language. What’s the -matter with her? Each time I come down she seems -more damned superior. Who does she think she is? -She’s reached the point of being dumb with superiorness, -next she’ll go blind with it, then she’ll die of it,” -and, frowning heavily, he began to fill his pipe.</p> - -<p>His bitterness against Teresa dated from the days<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span> -before the War when he used to write poetry. He had -once read her some of his poems, and she, being younger -and more brutal than she was now, had exclaimed, -“But, Arnold, they’re absolutely dead! They’re decomposing -with deadness.” He had never forgiven her.</p> - -<p>“I suppose she gives you a pretty thin time, doesn’t -she? She <i>does</i> hate you!”</p> - -<p>Concha blushed. An unexpected trait in Concha -was an inordinate vanity—the idea that any one, child, -dog, boring old woman, could possibly dislike her was -too humiliating to be admitted—and though one part -of her was fully aware that she irritated, nay, jarred -æsthetically upon Teresa, the other part of her obstinately, -angrily, denied it.</p> - -<p>“I don’t care if she does ... besides she doesn’t -... really,” she said hotly.</p> - -<p>She then chose a cigarette, placed it in a very long -amber holder, lit it, and began to smoke it with an -air of intense sensuous enjoyment. Concha was still -half playing at being grown up, and one of the things -about her that irritated Teresa was that she was apt -to walk and talk, to pour out tea, and smoke cigarettes, -like an English actress in a drawing-room play, never -quite losing her “stagyness.”</p> - -<p>“Do you know where the shoe pinches?” asked -Arnold. “It’s that you are six years younger than -she is; if it were less or more it would be all right—but -<i>six</i> years is jolly hard to forgive. You see, Teresa is -still nominally a girl. By Jove!” and he gave a -short, scornful laugh, “there she is, probably telling -herself that you get on her nerves because you’re frivolous, -and like rag-time, and all the rest of it, while all -the time she, the immaculate, is just suffering from -suppressed sex, like any other spinster.”</p> - -<p>This explanation definitely jarred on Concha: she, -too, suspected Teresa of being jealous of her, but deep<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span> -down she hoped that this jealousy was based on something -less fortuitous and more flattering to herself than -six years’ juniority; nor did she like being thought of as -a mere frivolous “fox-trotter.” She had the tremendous -pride of generation of the post-War adolescent; she and -her friends she felt as a brilliant, insolent triumphant -sodality, free, wise, invincible, who, having tasted of -the fruit of the seven symbolic trees of Paradise, and -having found their flavour insipid, had chosen, with -their bold, rather weary eyes wide open, to expend -their magnificent talents on fox-trots, <i>revues</i>, and -dalliance, to turn life and its treacherous possibilities -into a Platonic <i>kermis</i>—oh, it was maddening of Teresa -not to see this, to persist in thinking of them as frivolous, -commonplace, rather vulgar young mediocrities! She -should just hear some of the midnight talks between -Concha and her friend, Elfrida Penn ... the passion, -the satire, the profundity!</p> - -<p>As a matter of fact, these talks were mainly of young -men, chiffons, the doings of their other schoolfellows, -what their head mistress had said to them on such -and such an occasion at school, with an occasional -interjection of, “Oh, it’s all <i>beastly</i>!” or a wondering -whether twenty years hence they would be very dull -and stout, and whether they would still be friends.</p> - -<p>But midnight talks are apt to acquire in retrospect a -great profundity and significance.</p> - -<p>Also, the crudeness of Arnold’s words—“suppressed -sex, like any other spinster”—shocked her in spite of -herself. Her old, child’s veneration for Teresa lived -on side by side with her new conviction that she was -<i>passée</i>, out-of-date, pre-War, and it made her wince -that she should be explained by nasty, Freudian -theories.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Lord! I’m sick of it all!” she cried with -exaggerated vehemence.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span></p> - -<p>“Sick of what?”</p> - -<p>“<i>This.</i>”</p> - -<p>“I suppose it’s pretty difficult at home now?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, well, you know it’s never been the same since -Pepa died.”</p> - -<p>This time it was Arnold that winced; he could not -yet bear to hear Pepa mentioned.</p> - -<p>“It’s made the Doña a fanatic,” Concha continued, -“and she never was that before, you know. Who was -it? Teresa, or some one, said that English ivy had -grown round Peter’s rock, and birds had made their -nest in it ... <i>before</i>. But now she’s absolutely -rampantly Catholic ... you know, she wants to -dedicate the house to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and -have little squares of stuff embroidered with it nailed -on all the doors....”</p> - -<p>“<i>Good Lord!</i>”</p> - -<p>“But, of course, Dad won’t hear of it.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I don’t quite see what it’s got to do with -<i>him</i>—if it makes her happier,” and his voice became -suddenly aggressive.</p> - -<p>“And she’d do anything on earth to prevent either of -us marrying a Protestant ... after all, what do-o-oes -it all matter? Lord, what fools these mortals be!”</p> - -<p>And Concha, who, for a few moments, had been -completely natural, once more turned into an English -actress in a drawing-room play.</p> - -<p>“Um ... yes ...” said Arnold meditatively, -sighing, and knocking out the ashes of his pipe.</p> - -<p>“Hulloa!” she suddenly drawled, as a plump, grinning, -round-faced, young man made his appearance on -the loggia.</p> - -<p>It was Eben Moore, son of the vicar and senior -“snotty” on one of His Majesty’s ships.</p> - -<p>As to his name—it was short for Ebenezer, which, -as Mrs. Moore continually told one, “has always been<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span> -a name in my husband’s family.... My husband, -you know, is the youngest son of a youngest son,” she -would add with a humorously wry smile, as if there -was something at once glorious and regrettable in -belonging to the Tribe of Benjamin.</p> - -<p>His face perceptibly fell as he caught sight of the -two personable men playing clock-golf on the lawn.</p> - -<p>“Aow lor’! You didn’t tell me as what there was -company,” he said, imitating the local accent.</p> - -<p>“Good God!” muttered Arnold, who found Eben’s -humour nauseating; and he slouched off to join Guy, -who was writing letters in the billiard-room.</p> - -<p>“Got it?” said Concha, stretching out her hand -and looking at him through her eyelashes.</p> - -<p>Eben giggled. “I say! It’s pretty hot stuff, you -know.”</p> - -<p>“E-e-eben! Don’t be a fool; hand it over.”</p> - -<p>Eben, grinning from ear to ear, took a sealed envelope -out of his pocket and gave it to her, and having opened -it, she began to read its contents with little squirts of -laughter.</p> - -<p>From time immemorial, young ladies have had a -fancy for exercising their calligraphy and taste in copying -elegant extracts into an album; for instance, -there is a Chinese novel, translated by an abbé of the -eighteenth century, which tells of ladies who, all day -long, sat in pagodas, copying passages from the classics -in hands like the flight of a dragon. Harriet Smith, -too, had an album into which she and Emma copied -acrostics.</p> - -<p>Concha owned to the same harmless weakness; -though the extracts copied into her album could perhaps -scarcely be qualified as “elegant”: there was, among -other things, an unpublished play by W. S. Gilbert—(“What -I love about our English humour—<i>Punch</i>, -and W. S. Gilbert—is that it never has anything ...<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span> -well, <i>questionable</i>,” Mrs. Moore would sometimes exclaim -to the Doña), Wilke’s <i>Essay on Woman</i>, and <i>Poor but -Honest</i>.</p> - -<p>One day, Teresa, happening to come into Concha’s -room, had caught sight of the album, and asked if -she might look at it.</p> - -<p>“Oh, <i>do</i>, by all means,” Concha had drawled, partly -from defiance, partly from curiosity.</p> - -<p>Impassively, Teresa had read it through; and then -had said, “I’d advise you to ask Arnold the next time -he’s in Cambridge to find you an old copy of Law’s -<i>Call to a Devout Life</i>—that man in the market-place -might have one—beautifully bound, if possible. Then -take out the pages and bind <i>this</i> in the cover.”</p> - -<p>Concha had done so; and if she had been as relentless -an observer of Teresa as Teresa was of her, she might -have detected in what had just transpired a touch on -Teresa’s part of under-stated, nevertheless unmistakable, -<i>cabotinage</i>.</p> - -<p>The contents of the sealed envelope, which was -causing her so much amusement, was a copy of the song, -<i>Clergymen’s Daughters</i> that on his last leave she had -persuaded Eben on his return to his ship to make for -her from the gun-room collection, and which he had -not on their previous meeting had an opportunity of -giving her.</p> - -<p>But she was not aware that there are three current -versions of this song, corresponding to the X, the double -X, and triple X on the labels of whisky bottles, and that -it was only the double X strength that Eben had given -her.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span></p> - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>After luncheon most of them played Snooker, to the -accompaniment of the gramophone, Anna and Jasper -taking turns in changing the records.</p> - -<p>Eben had hurt his hand, so he sat and talked to -Teresa on the sofa.</p> - -<p>It was a fact that had always both puzzled and -annoyed her that he evidently enjoyed talking to her.</p> - -<p>“Have you read Compton Mackenzie’s last?” he -asked.</p> - -<p>Why would every one persist in talking to her about -books? And why did he not say, “the last Compton -Mackenzie?” She decided that his diction had been -influenced by frequenting his mother’s Women’s Institute -and hearing continually of “little Ernest, Mrs. -Brown’s second,” or “Mrs. Kett’s last.”</p> - -<p>“No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll lend it to you—I’m not sure if it’s as good -as the others, though ... it’s funny, but I’m very -fastidious about novels; the only thing I really care -about is style—I’m a regular sensualist about fine -English.”</p> - -<p>“Are you? Perhaps you will like this, then—‘I -remember Father Benson saying with his fascinating -little stutter: He has such a g-g-gorgeously multitudinous -mind’?”</p> - -<p>Eben stared at her, quite at a loss as to what she was -talking about.</p> - -<p>“It sounds ... it sounds topping. What is it from?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t quite remember.”</p> - -<p>But it wasn’t fair, she decided. Because she happened -to date from the feeling of flatness and disgust -aroused in her by this sentence, read in a magazine<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span> -years ago, the awakening in her of the power of distinguishing -between literature and journalism, it did -not follow that it was exceptionally frightful or that -other people ought to react to it in the same way that -she had. And yet, “gorgeous palaces,” “multitudinous, -seas incarnadine”—the words themselves were -beautiful enough in all conscience. Anyhow, it was -not Eben’s fault; though “a regular sensualist for fine -English....” Good God!</p> - -<p>“Do you want <i>Hee—hee—Heeweeine Melodies</i>, or -<i>Way Down in Georgia</i>, or <i>Abide With Me</i>? Arnold! -Do you want <i>Hee-wee-ween Melodies</i>, or <i>Way Down in -Georgia</i>, or <i>Abide With Me</i>? Do say!” yelled Anna -from the gramophone.</p> - -<p>“People are inclined to think that sailors don’t go -in for reading, and that sort of thing, but as a matter -of fact ... our Commander, for instance, has a topping -library, and all really good books—history mostly.”</p> - -<p>Rows upon rows of those volumes, the paper of -which is so good, the margins so wide, but out of which, -if opened, one of the illustrations is certain to fall—Lady -Hamilton, or Ninon de l’Enclos, or Madame -Récamier; now Teresa knew who read these books.</p> - -<p>“Silly Billy! Silly Billy! Silly Billy!” yelled -Anna and Jasper in chorus as Rory missed a straight -pot on the blue; it was their way of expressing genuine -friendliness to their playmate of the morning.</p> - -<p>On and on went Eben’s voice; scratch, grate, scratch, -grate, went the gramophone.</p> - -<p>The light began to grow colder and thinner.</p> - -<p>“Snookered for a pint!”</p> - -<p>“Be a sportsman now....”</p> - -<p>“I say!... he’s <i>done</i> it!”</p> - -<p>“I say, you’re a devil of a fellow, Munroe!”</p> - -<p>The game ended and they put up their cues.</p> - -<p>“Now then, you two, what are you up to? Anna,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span> -you’re a hard-hearted little thing; why aren’t you -crying that I didn’t win?”</p> - -<p>At which sally of Rory’s the children doubled up with -delighted laughter.</p> - -<p>They all seemed to be feeling the tedium of the -period between luncheon and tea, and lolled listlessly -in chairs, or sat on the edge of the billiard-table, swinging -their legs.</p> - -<p>“Anna, darling, put on one of the Hawaiian melodies—it’s -among those there, I’m sure,” said Concha.</p> - -<p>After several false starts, and some scratchings of -the needle (it was Jasper’s turn to put on the record), -the hot-scented tune began to pervade the room.</p> - -<p>“That’s the sort of tune that on hot nights must -have been played to Oberon by his little Indian catamite,” -said Guy, sitting down on the sofa beside Teresa.</p> - -<p>She smiled a little absently; the Hawaiian melody -was like a frame, binding the room and its inmates into -a picture. Concha, her eyes fixed and dreamy; Rory, -intent on a puzzle—shaking little rolling pellets into -holes or something; Arnold sitting on the edge of the -billiard-table while Anna lit his pipe for him; Jasper -motionless, for once, his eyes fixed intently on the -needle of the gramophone; David standing by the door -gazing gravely at Concha, looking not unlike a Spanish -Knight who carries in his own veins more than a drop -of the Moorish blood that it is his holy mission to spill; -Eben standing by the fireplace, a broad grin on his -face, his hands on his hips, swaying slightly, in time with -the music ... what was it he was like? Teresa -suddenly remembered that it was the principal boy -in a little local pantomime they had all gone to one -Christmas—she evidently could not sing, because -during the choruses she would stand silent, grinning -and swaying as Eben was doing now.</p> - -<p>The view was painted on the windows—a <i>pietà</i> as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span> -nobly coloured as that of Avignon; for, in spite of -flowers and fruits and sunshine, on the knees of the -earth the year lay dying.</p> - -<p>Teresa was thinking, “The present frozen into the -past—that is art. At this moment things are looking -as if they were the past. That is why I am feeling as -if I were having an adventure—because the present -and the past have become one.”</p> - -<p>Squeak! Burr! Gurr! went the gramophone.</p> - -<p>“Stop it, Jasper! Stop it!”</p> - -<p>“Beastly noise! It reminds me of the dentist.”</p> - -<p>The record was removed.</p> - -<p>“<i>Très entraînant</i>—as the deaf <i>bourgeoise</i> said after -having listened to the Dead March in <i>Saul</i>,” said Guy; -he had suddenly invented this Sam Wellerism in the -middle of the tune, and had hardly been able to wait -till the end to come out with it.</p> - -<p>Then Anna put on a fox-trot, and Rory and Concha, -Arnold and Guy, in the narrow space between the -billiard-table and gramophone, hopped and wriggled -and jumped—one could not call it dancing.</p> - -<p>“Now then, Munroe,” cried Rory, when it was over, -“You’re such hot stuff at billiards—let’s see what you -can do on the light fantastic.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, do, Mr. Munroe,” and Concha stood swaying -before him, flushed and provocative.</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid ... I don’t ... well, if you’ve got -a tango here ... I used to try my hand at it in Africa.”</p> - -<p>“Let’s see ... put on the <i>Tango de Rêve</i>, Anna. -Got it?”</p> - -<p>David hesitated a moment; then, as if coming to a -sudden resolution, he clasped her, and stood waiting -for the bar to end; then they began to dance, and -their souls seemed to leave their bodies, leaving them -empty to the tune, which gradually informed them -till they and it were one; a few short steps, then a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span> -breathless halt, a few more steps, another halt ... -then letting themselves go a little, then another halt; -their faces tense and mask-like ... truly a strange -dance, the Tango, speaking the broken, taciturn, -language of passion:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Thanked be fortune: it hath been otherwise:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Twenty times better; but once especial</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In thin array: after a pleasant guise,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When her loose gown did from her shoulders fall,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And she me caught in her arms long and small....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Grrr ... went the gramophone—the spell was -snapt.</p> - -<p>“Bravo!” cried the audience, clapping; while -’Snice began to bark, and the children to jump up and -down and squeal.</p> - -<p>“You dance <i>divinely</i>!” cried Concha, flushed and -laughing.</p> - -<p>David blushed, frowned, muttered something inaudible, -and left the room.</p> - -<p>They exchanged looks of surprise.</p> - -<p>“Hot stuff!” said Rory; and they settled down to -desultory, frivolous, Anglo-Saxon chatter—not unlike -fox-trots, thought Teresa.</p> - -<p>She shut her eyes, half mesmerised by the din of all -the voices talking together.</p> - -<p>The talk, like a flight of birds, squeezed itself out -into a long thin line, compressed itself into a compact -phalanx, was now diagonal, now round, now square, -now all three at once, according to the relative position -of the talkers.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you <i>love</i> Owen Nares? I love his English -so—I love the way he says, ‘I’m so <i>jolly</i> glad to meet -you.’” “I knew Middlesex would be first—it was -only poetic justice to Plum Warner.” “I don’t care<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span> -a damn what the <i>Nation</i> or what the <i>New Statesman</i> -says—I happen to know....” “Of course, with -Jimmy Wilde it’s all grit and science—he ought to do -him in every time.” “Is it true that Leslie Henson -wears spectacles off the stage?” “How much do you -think I gave for it? <i>Thirty bob.</i> A jeweller I showed -it to in town said it was the very finest Baltic amber—you -see, I got it out there.” “I <i>know</i>! My cousin, -Guy’s brother, when he was going out to Tin-Sin thought -it would be nice to brighten up China, so he took out -an assortment of the merriest socks you ever saw in -your life, and when he was killed my aunt handed -them over to me, and I had ’em dyed black....” -“Very nayce, too!” “What are you saying about -socks? I wish to God some one would mend mine!” -“Well, <i>I</i> got a bit of amber in an old shop in Norwich....” -“He’s a priceless little man ... he -came out and amused us at the front.”</p> - -<p>“Tea time!” said Arnold, looking at his watch -and yawning.</p> - -<p>“Tea time!” the others echoed; and they all got up.</p> - -<p>“But look here, Miss Concha,” said Rory, “if you -love Owen Nares so much, why not come up and see -him? It’s quite a good show ... you’ll look at <i>him</i> -and I’ll look at the lady—though you’ll probably have -the best of it. What do you think, Arnold? We -could dine first at the Berkeley or somewhere ... -well, look here, that’s settled; we must fix up a night.”</p> - -<p>Teresa felt a sudden and, to her, most unusual -craving for the life that smells of lip-salve and powder, -where in bright, noisy restaurants “every shepherd tells -his tale ...” where “the beautiful Miss Brabazons” -laugh and dance and triumph eternally.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span></p> - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>After tea they decided to go a walk, and escort Eben -part of his way home—a delightful plan, it seemed to -Anna, Jasper, and ’Snice; but to Anna and Jasper the -Doña said firmly, “No, my darlings; I want you.”</p> - -<p>Their faces fell; they knew it meant what Nanny, -who was a Protestant, called “a Bible lesson from kind -Granny.”</p> - -<p>Needless to say, the fact that these lessons were -opposed to the wishes—nay, to the express command—of -Dr. Sinclair, was powerless in deterring the Doña -from attempting to save her grandchildren’s souls; -and, even if she failed in the attempt, they should at -any rate not be found in the condition of criminal ignorance -of the children of one of Pepa’s friends who had -asked why there were always “big plus-signs” on the -tops of churches.</p> - -<p>The Doña was not merely a Catholic; she was also -a Christian—that is to say, though she did not always -follow his precepts, she had an intense personal love of -Christ.</p> - -<p>Besides the shadowy figure struggling towards “projection” -through the ritual of the Church’s year, there -are more concrete representations on which the Catholic -can feed his longings.</p> - -<p>The Doña’s love of Christ dated from the first Seville -Holy Week that she could remember.</p> - -<p>She had sat with her mother and her little brother, -Juanito, watching the <i>pasos</i> carried past on the shoulders -of the <i>cofradias</i> ... many a beautiful Virgin, velvet-clad, -pearl-hung, like Isabella the Catholic. Then had -come a group of more than life-sized figures—a young, -bearded man, his face as white as death and flecked -with blood, the veins of his hands as knotted as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span> -cords that bound them, surrounded by half a dozen -fiendish-looking men, fists clenched as if about to strike -him, some clutching stones in their upraised hands, -all with faces contorted with hatred.</p> - -<p>“Look! Look! Who are these wicked men?” -cried Juanito.</p> - -<p>“These are the Jews,” answered their mother.</p> - -<p>“And who is the poor man?” asked the Doña.</p> - -<p>“Jésus Christos.”</p> - -<p>Juanito, his little fists clenched, was all for flying -at the plaster bullies; but the Doña was howling for -pity of the <i>pobre caballero</i>.</p> - -<p>Then, at Christmas time in every church there was a -crèche in which lay the Infant Jesus, his small, waxen -hands stretched out in welcome, his face angelically -sweet.</p> - -<p>Also; at different times, for instance, when the -Gospel was read in Spanish, during her preparation -for her first Communion, the abstract presentation of -the Liturgy had been supplemented with stories from -His life on earth, and quotations from His own words.</p> - -<p>Indeed, the sources and nature of the Doña’s knowledge -of Jesus was not unlike that of some old peasant -woman of Palestine. The old woman, say, would, from -time to time, ride into Nazareth on her donkey, carrying -a basket of grapes and olives to sell in the market: -and perhaps, if the basket should have fallen and -scattered the fruit, or if she had a pitcher to fill at the -fountain, she may have received a helping hand or a -kindly word from the gentlest and strangest-spoken -young man that had ever crossed her path.</p> - -<p>Then one day she may have paid her first visit to -Jerusalem—perhaps a lawsuit over a boundary taking -her there, or the need to present her orphaned grandchild -in the Temple—and have seen this same young -man led through the streets, bound with cords, while<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span> -the populace shouted, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” -and have returned to her remote little farm with an ache -in her heart.</p> - -<p>And, as the years would go by, from the tales of wayfarers, -from rumours blown from afar, she might come -to believe that somehow or other the young man had -died for the poor—for her; had died and risen again. -And gradually, as with the years his legend grew, she -would come to look upon him as a fairy-being, akin -to the old sanctities of the countryside, swelling her -grapes, plumping her olives, and keeping away locusts -and blight. But, towards the end of her life, business -may have taken her again to Nazareth, where, hearing -that the young man’s mother was still alive, something -may have compelled her to go and visit her. And -in the little room behind the carpenter’s shop, where -the other sons and grandsons were planing and sawing, -and singing to ancient melodies of the desert songs of -plenty and vengeance and the Messiah, the two old -women would talk together in hushed tones of Him who -so many years ago had been crucified and buried. And -through the mother’s anecdotes of His childhood and -tearful encomiums, “He was ever a good kind son to -me,”—the fairy-being would once more become human -and ponderable—the gentlest young man that had -ever crossed her path.</p> - -<p>So far, the Doña had not been very successful in -bringing Anna and Jasper to their Lord.</p> - -<p>For instance, when she had told them the story of -Christ among the doctors, Anna had merely remarked -coldly and reprovingly, “He must have been a very -goody-goody, grown-uppish sort of boy.”</p> - -<p>This particular evening the Doña had decided to -consecrate to an exegesis of the doctrine of Transsubstantiation.</p> - -<p>When the Doña said that at a certain point of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span> -mass the bread turned to the actual flesh and blood -and bones of Jesus, Anna’s face assumed an expression -of dogged scepticism, and having decided that she -must ask Teresa about it, continued her own thoughts: -Mamselle, who gave her French lessons in Cambridge, -had fired her imagination with accounts of the <i>bouktis</i> -they used to have in the Surbiton family where she was -once governess—“<i>vraiment, c’était passionant; je me -demande pourquoi Dr. Sinclair n’organise pas des bouktis -à Trinité—ça serait très amusant pour les jeunes -gens</i>....” It <i>was</i> a good idea! All the people with -buried names of books, and having to guess. Oh, -yes!... one could go with a lot of little lambs’ tails -sewed on one’s frock ... yes, but how was one going -to get in the “<i>of Shakespeare</i>”.... <i>Of course</i> ... -what a goose she was not to have realised it -before ... <i>bouktis</i> was Mamselle’s way of saying -“book-teas” ... that’s what the parties were -called—“book-teas.”</p> - -<p>Thus Anna; as to Jasper—if one could reduce the -instantaneous and fantastic picture produced on his -mind to a definite consecutive statement, it would read -something like this: By the powerful spells of a clergyman, -who was also a magician, pieces of bread were -turned into tiny men—long-robed, bearded, and wearing -golden straw hats of which nothing but the brim could -be seen from in front. Then the clergyman distributed -to every one at the party one of the tiny men, to be -their very own. They each, forthwith, swallowed their -tiny man, and he made himself a little nest in their -stomachs, whence he could be summoned to be played -with whenever they liked.</p> - -<p>He began jumping up and down, his body trembling -like that of an excited terrier.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I want, I want, I want some of that bread,” he -cried. “Oh, when can I have it, Doña? Oh, I can’t wait!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span></p> - -<p>Needless to say, the Doña was not in the least taken -in—she did not take it for a sign of Grace, nor did it -seem to her in the least touching; but she knew it -would strike Jollypot as being both, and the picture she -foresaw that the incident would produce on her—that -of the innocent little pagan calling aloud to God for the -spiritual food that was his birthright—was one that the -Doña felt would be both soothing, and expressive of the -way in which she would have liked the incident to have -appeared to herself.</p> - -<p>A perfect household of slaves would include a sentimentalist -and a cynic by means of whom the lord, -whatever his own temperament, could express vicariously -whatever interpretation of events was the one -that harmonised with his plans or mood of the moment.</p> - -<p>It was as she expected; Jollypot’s eyes filled with -tears, and she murmured, “Poor little man! poor -little man!”</p> - -<p>And she was long haunted by the starving cry of the -innocent, “I want that bread! I want that bread!”</p> - -<h3>6</h3> - -<p>The walkers set out in the direction of the view, -strolling in a bunch down the grass path between -the border.</p> - -<p>“You know, I don’t really like these herbaceous -things—they aren’t tame. I like flowers you can make -a pet of, roses and violets and that sort of thing,” said -Rory, looking towards Teresa.</p> - -<p>She did not meet his eye, feeling in no mood to feed -his vanity by sympathising with his fancies.</p> - -<p>From the village to their right rang out the chimes -for evensong.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span></p> - -<p>“Would Mrs. Moore mind if you missed church, -Eben?” asked Concha.</p> - -<p>“She would be <i>grieved</i>,” grinned Eben. “You see, -Lady Norton wasn’t there this morning, but she always -comes in the evening, and the mater wants her to see -my manly beauty.”</p> - -<p>This remark, thought Teresa, showed a certain -acuteness and humour; but all Concha’s contemporaries -seemed to have these qualities, and yet, it meant so -little, existed side by side with such an absence of -serious emotion, such an ignoring of intellectual beauty, -such a—such a—such an un-Platonic turn of mind. -Probably every one in the sixteenth and seventeenth -centuries—country parsons, grocers’ apprentices, aldermen, -fine ladies—had only to take up a goose’s quill -and write as they talked to produce the most exquisite -prose: witness the translation of the Bible by a body -of obscure, and (considering the fatuity of some of -their mistranslations) half-witted, old divines. Perhaps -the collective consciousness of humanity was silently -capturing, one after the other, the outposts of the -intelligence, so that some day we should all share in a -flat and savourless communism of apprehension.</p> - -<p>But then the English, as a whole, had lost the power -of writing automatically fine prose ... oh, it was not -worth bothering about!</p> - -<p>When they got out of the grounds of Plasencia, they -broke up into couples and trios—Rory moving to one -side of Concha, David, his back looking rather dogged, -to the other. Arnold had forgotten his distaste for -Eben in a heated discussion of the battle of Jutland. -Teresa found herself walking with Guy.</p> - -<p>To the right lay a field of stubble, ruddled with -poppies, and to the right of that a little belt of trees. -Teresa had long noticed how in autumn scarlet is the -oriflamme of the spectrum; for round it the other<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span> -colours rally at their gayest and most gallant. For -instance, the dull red roofs of the cluster of barns to -the right glowed like rubies, if one’s glance, before -resting on them, travelled through the poppy-shot -stubble; and, following the same route, her eye could -detect autumnal tints in the belt of trees, which otherwise -would have been imperceptible.</p> - -<p>“How lovely poppies would be if they weren’t so -ubiquitous,” said Guy. “I always think of poppies -when I see all the Renoirs in the Rue de la Boétie in -Paris—every second shop’s a picture dealer, and they -all have at least two Renoirs in their window—dreams -of beauty if there weren’t so many of ’em. And yet, -I don’t know—that very exuberance, the feeling of an -exquisite, delicate, yet unexigeant flower springing up -in profusion in the lightest and poorest soil may be a -quality of their charm.”</p> - -<p>Teresa said nothing; but her brows slightly contracted.</p> - -<p>Now they were walking past one of the few fields -of barley that were still standing—all creamy and -steaming ... oh, dear, that simile of Guy’s, in one -of his poems, between a field of barley and a great -bowl of some American patent cereal on a poster -... at any moment there might appear on the sky -the gigantic, grinning face of the cereal-fiend, whose -sole function was to grin with anticipative greed, and -brandish a spoon on the point of being dipped into the -foaming, smoking brew ... disgusting; and maddening -that it should cling to her memory.</p> - -<p>“Well, I suppose long ago the Danes and Saxons -fought battles here; and the buried hatchet has turned -the wild flowers red ... or does iron in the soil turn -flowers blue?”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Teresa coldly.</p> - -<p>They walked on in silence for a few minutes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">As through the land at eve we went</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And plucked the ripened ears,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My wife and I....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“My wife and I ... fell out ... how does it go?”</p> - -<p>“Not like that, Guy,” said Teresa, with a short laugh.</p> - -<p>Guy blushed to the roots of his yellow hair; he had -a secret handicap of which he was horribly ashamed—practically -no ear for rhythm; and it was partly the -lameness of his verses that had made him fall back on -a poetry that had neither rhyme nor rhythm.</p> - -<p>When he was absent from Teresa—even during a few -hours—his idea of her would undergo a swift change; -though remaining aloof, she would turn into a wonderfully -sympathetic lady—remote, but not inaccessible; -a lady eminently suited to moving gracefully among -the Chippendale, coloured prints, and Queen Anne -lacquer of his dining-room in St. James’s Street; quite -at home, also, among the <i>art nègre</i> and modern French -pictures of his drawing-room; receiving his <i>mots</i> with -a whimsically affectionate smile; in society bringing -out all that was most brilliant in him—existing, in -short, merely for his own greater glory.</p> - -<p>It took a very short absence from her—for instance, -the interval between dinner and breakfast the next -morning—for this idea of her to oust completely the -real one. Then he would see her again, and would -again be bruised and chilled by the haughty coldness -masked by her low, gentle voice, her many silences; -and the idea would be shattered; to come together -again the minute he was out of her presence.</p> - -<p>“Of course! You <i>would</i> be incapable of appreciating -Tennyson,” he said angrily.</p> - -<p>“Why? Because I venture to hint that your -version doesn’t scan?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, it’s not only that,” he almost screamed; “it’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span> -really because you think it’s sentimental to quote -Tennyson. Can’t you see that simple, trite words like -these are the only ones suited to expressing the threadbare -yet exquisite emotion that one feels when one -walks through autumn fields on Sunday evening?”</p> - -<p>“Yes; but why not make those simple, trite words -scan?... and look here, Guy,” she added with unusual -heat, “it seems to me perfectly absurd to admire -Tennyson and crab Wordsworth. It makes one wonder -if any of your literary tastes are sincere. Everything -you dislike in Wordsworth is in Tennyson too—only -in Tennyson the prosaicness and flatness, though it -may be better expressed, is infinitely more ignoble. I -simply don’t understand this attitude to Wordsworth—it -makes me think that all you care about is verbal -dexterity. I don’t believe you know what real poetry -means.”</p> - -<p>Poor Guy! How could he know that her irritation -had really nothing to do with his attitude to Wordsworth, -that, in fact, he and his poetics were merely a -scapegoat?</p> - -<p>Shattered and sick at heart, he felt that his fears of -the previous evening about Oscar Wilde and brilliance -had been ruthlessly confirmed.</p> - -<p>She looked at him; he actually had tears in his eyes.</p> - -<p>“I ... I seem to have lost my temper,” she said -apologetically, “but it was only ... I’ve got rather -a headache, as a matter of fact, and what you said -yesterday about Wordsworth has rankled—he’s my -favourite poet. And you know I belong in taste to an -older generation; I simply don’t understand modern -things. But, as a matter of fact, I often like your -poetry very much.”</p> - -<p>This mollified him for the moment.</p> - -<p>“I say!” he exclaimed suddenly, walking more -quickly, “other people seem to be quarrelling.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span></p> - -<p>Sure enough: the trio ahead was standing still; -Concha’s lips were twitching and she was looking self-conscious; -Rory’s eyebrows were arched in surprise; -and David, glowering and thunderous, was standing -with clenched fists. As Teresa and Guy came up to -them he was saying fiercely: “... and I’m just sick -to death of lairds and that ... and if you want to -know, I’m heir-apparent to Munroe of Auchenballoch,” -and he laughed angrily.</p> - -<p>“You’re a lucky chap then ... Auchenballoch -is a very fine place,” said Rory in an even voice.</p> - -<p>“What’s up?” said Guy.</p> - -<p>“I seem to have annoyed Mr. Munroe, quite unintentionally,” -answered Rory.</p> - -<p>Slowly, painfully, David blushed under his dark skin.</p> - -<p>“I beg your pardon,” he murmured.</p> - -<p>Teresa felt a sudden wave of intense sympathy for -David, and of equally intense annoyance against Rory; -he had, doubtless, been again babbling about his relations—“old -Lionel Fane,” “the beautiful Miss Brabazons,” -and the rest of them—that was boring enough, -in all conscience; but if, as was probably the case, -David had been left pointedly out of the conversation, -it would become, into the bargain, insulting.</p> - -<p>And under his easy manners, Rory was so maddeningly -patronising—especially to David, with his, “I -say! Dashing fellah!” and, “Now then, Munroe, -let’s see what <i>you</i> can do.” But ... it was possible -that David’s irritation was primarily caused by far -more vital things. ’Snice there, lying on his back, his -tongue lolling out, his eyes glassy, completely unconscious -of the emotional storm raging above him, -would probably, if they could have been translated -into his own language, have understood David’s -feelings better than Teresa and sympathised with them -warmly.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span></p> - -<p>“I’m rather tired—do take me home, Mr. Munroe,” -said Teresa.</p> - -<p>He looked at her gratefully.</p> - -<p>For some minutes they walked in silence, both -embarrassed, Teresa turning over in her mind possible -conversational openings. “You have been in South -Africa, haven’t you?” “Do you play golf?”</p> - -<p>But she could not get them out.</p> - -<p>What she said finally was, “What did you mean -exactly last night when you said to my mother that in -times like the War one sees the star?”</p> - -<p>“I mean the Star of Bethlehem—they’re seasons of -Epiphany,” he answered.</p> - -<p>“But how do you mean exactly?”</p> - -<p>“Just that ... the Manifestation of Christ to the -Gentiles.” He said the words slowly, with gusto, as if -to him they had not yet become threadbare. “There -were a lot of chaps converted to Catholicism during the -War,” he went on.</p> - -<p>“Were you?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>He paused, and again they were silent. Then he -said, “I was brought up a Presbyterian, but I was -never interested in that, I didn’t think of religion at -all. But during the War there were several chaps that -were Catholics in my regiment, and I used sometimes -to go to mass with them, or benediction, because it was -quieter in there than anywhere else. Then their padre -began talking to me, and I saw that once you had taken -the plunge it was all shipshape and logical. But the -plunge was the thing—that seemed to me to take a lot -of nerve and faith.”</p> - -<p>Again he paused, then went on in a lower voice, -“Well, it was a wee church, very old, in a village behind -the lines, and one day mass was being celebrated there, -and just after the Consecration the gas gong and klaxons<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span> -sounded—that meant we had all to retire in double -quick time behind the gas zone. The priest wrapped up -the Host in the corporals and hurried off with the rest -of us. When the scare was over and he went back to -the church—<i>the corporals were soaked in blood</i>.”</p> - -<p>The last words were said scarcely above a whisper.</p> - -<p>Well, there was no Protestant nonsense here; this -was the Holy Mother herself in all her crudity.</p> - -<p>Teresa had not the slightest idea what to say; and -decided that she had better say nothing at all.</p> - -<p>Yes, but it was not the bleeding corporals, really, -that had done it. She remembered a curious experience -she had once had when waiting to be fetched home in -the car by her father from some Chelsea lodgings where -she had been spending a fortnight. Her box was -packed, she was all ready dressed for the drive; she -had nothing to do but to wait in a little valley sheltered -from Time, out of the beat of the Recording Angel, -her old activities switched off, her new activities not -yet switched on. Then the practical relation between -her and the shabby familiar furniture suddenly snapped, -and she looked at it with new eyes—the old basket-chair, -the horse-hair sofa, the little table on which was -an aspidistra in a pot—they were now merely arrangements -of planes and lines, and, as such, startlingly -significant. For the first time she was looking at them -æsthetically, and so novel was the sensation that it -felt like a mystical experience. The Beatific Vision -... may it not be this æsthetic vision turned on -spiritual formula? A shabby threadbare creed suddenly -seen as something simple, solid, monumental? -Tolstoy must have been reared on the Gospels; but -suddenly when he was already middle-aged he thought -he had made a discovery which would revolutionise -the world; and this was that one must love one’s -neighbour as oneself. It was merely that he had, so to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span> -speak for the first time seen the chairs and tables -æsthetically. Yes ... heliacal periods, when the -star becomes visible. Mr. Munroe had said that he had -never before thought about religion at all; and it was a -mere chance that the room in which he first saw the -tables and chairs should be hung with crucifixes and -Catholic prints.</p> - -<p>The bells had stopped ringing for evensong, the sun -was very near setting. Caroline, the donkey, gave -tongue from the paddock of Plasencia—a long, drawn-out -wail prefacing a series of <i>ee-aws</i>.</p> - -<p>“That means rain,” said David.</p> - -<p>“Caroline sings nothing but Handel,” said Teresa, -“a long recitative before the <i>aria</i>.”</p> - -<p>For a few seconds David looked puzzled, and then -threw back his head, and, for the first time since he -had been at Plasencia, laughed aloud.</p> - -<p>“That’s offly good,” he cried.</p> - -<p>But Caroline was not the only singer of Handel. As -they crossed the lawn, Jollypot could be heard singing -to the cottage piano in the old schoolroom, <i>For He -shall feed His flock like a Shepherd</i>.</p> - -<p>Among the many traces of Protestantism that had -clung to her was a craving for hymns at dusk on -Sundays; but being debarred from <i>Hymns Ancient -and Modern</i> she had to fall back upon Handel.</p> - -<p>And <i>He</i> shall <i>feed</i> His <i>flock</i> like a <i>she</i>-e-e-e-e-<i>perd</i>.</p> - -<p>Her small, sweet voice, like the silver hammer of a -gnome, beat out the words of the prophet, to which -Handel’s sturdy melody—so square, so steady on its -feet—lent an almost insolent confidence.</p> - -<p>And <i>He</i> shall <i>feed</i> His <i>flock</i> like a <i>she</i>-e-e-e-e-<i>perd</i>....</p> - -<p>“Is that—is that the wee lady?” asked David, -gently.</p> - -<p>Teresa nodded.</p> - -<p>They stood still and listened; Teresa was smiling, a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span> -little sadly: the old optimists, Isaiah and Handel, had -certainly succeeded in cozening Jollypot’s papa; for -on a living worth £200 a year and no private means -he had begotten seven daughters. Nevertheless, the -little voice went on unfalteringly.</p> - -<p>And <i>He</i> shall <i>feed</i> His <i>flock</i> like a <i>she</i>-e-e-e-e-<i>perd</i>.</p> - -<p>David glanced at the slim, graceful young woman -standing beside him, looking gentler than she usually -did, but still very remote.</p> - -<p>She, and Jollypot’s singing, and the scent of roses, -and the great stretch behind them of Sabbath-hushed -English fields, brought back, somehow or other, one of -the emotions of his boyhood. Not being introspective, -he had never analysed it, but he knew that it was somehow -connected with a vague dissatisfaction with his -lot, and with a yearning for the “gentry,” and hence, -because when he was a boy he thought they were -the same thing, a yearning also for the English. He -remembered how badly he had had it one Sunday -morning when he had played truant from the service -in his father’s church, and had slunk into the “wee -Episcopalian chapel” in the grounds of the laird. -The castle had been let that summer to an English -judge and his family, and the judge’s “high-English” -voice, monotonous, refined, reading the lessons in a -sort of chant, pronouncing <i>when</i> as <i>wen</i>, and <i>poor</i> as -<i>paw</i>, had thrilled him as the dramatic reading of his -father had never done. Then some years later he had -slipped into evensong, and the glossy netted “bun” -at the nape of the neck of Miss Stewart (the laird’s -daughter), and her graceful genuflections at the name of -Jesus had thrilled him in the same way. Finally the -emotion had crystallised into dreams of a tall, kind, -exquisitely tidy lady, with a “high-English” voice and -a rippling laugh, sitting in a tent during the whole of a -June afternoon scoring at the English game of cricket<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span> -... or at a school treat, standing tall and smiling, her -arms stretched out, her hands clasped in those of her -twin pillar, warbling:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Oranges and lemons</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sing the bells of St. Clement’s,</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">while under the roof of arms scampered the hot, excited -children.</p> - -<p>Anyway, it was an emotion that gave him a strange, -sweet nausea.</p> - -<p>As to Teresa; as if her mind had caught a reflection -from his, she was pondering the line:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The ancient English dower of inward happiness.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Wordsworth mourned it as a thing of the past; but -had it ever been? Did Jollypot possess it? Who -could say. Certainly none of the rest of them did.</p> - -<h3>7</h3> - -<p>David left early the next morning. Evidently from -him, too, Concha had received an invitation to a dinner -and a play, for as they said good-bye she said, “Well -then, Thursday, 16th, at the Savoy—it will be <i>divine</i>.”</p> - -<p>Rory did not leave till after tea.</p> - -<p>Teresa’s offer of sleeping, owing to the shortage of -rooms, in her father’s dressing-room during the week-end, -had been accepted, and Rory had been put into -her bedroom; when she went up to dress for dinner on -Monday night she had noticed, on going near the bed, -a smell which seemed familiar. Suddenly she realised -that it was the smell of Rory’s hair-wash—the housemaid -had actually forgotten to change the sheets.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span></p> - -<p>Teresa had flushed, and her heart had begun to beat -in an odd, fluttering way; but she went down to dinner -without ringing for the housemaid.</p> - -<p>When she came up for the night the smell was still -there. She undressed, and stood for some seconds by -the bed, her eyes shut, her hands clenched; and then, -blushing crimson, all over her face and neck, and, -flinging on her dressing-gown, driven by some strange -instinct, she flew to Concha’s room.</p> - -<p>Concha’s light was out. She walked up to the bed -and gently shaking her said, “Concha! Concha! -May I sleep with you? They’ve forgotten to change -the sheets on my bed.”</p> - -<p>“Sheets? What sheets?” said Concha in a sleepy -voice.</p> - -<p>“In my room ... you know Captain Dundas has -been sleeping there.”</p> - -<p>“Poor darling, how filthy! Get in,” and Concha, -so as to leave room for her, rolled over to one side.</p> - -<p>Τὸ συγγενές τοι δεινόν, close physical kinship is a mysterious -thing; for, however much they may think they -dislike each other, it nearly always entails what can -only be called a bodily affection between the members -it unites.</p> - -<p>For instance, since Pepa’s death, Concha’s was the -only plate Teresa would not have shrunk from eating -off, Concha’s the only clothes she would not have shrunk -from wearing.</p> - -<p>That night they fell asleep holding each other’s hands.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</h2> - -</div> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p>The night that Teresa and Concha spent so affectionately -in the same bed had no effect on their relationship: -Concha continued flinging herself, angrily, violently, -against Teresa’s stony stare.</p> - -<p>If they happened to be alone in the room when the -post arrived and there was a letter for Concha, she -would read it through with knit brows, exclaiming -under her breath the while; then she would re-read it -and, laying it down, would gaze into the fire, apparently -occupied with some grave problem of conduct; finally, -springing to her feet with an air of having taken a final -and irrevocable decision, she would violently tear up -the letter, and fling the fragments into the fire.</p> - -<p>The letter would probably be from her friend, Elfrida -Penn, and may have contained some slight cause for -anxiety, as Elfrida was an hysterical young woman and -one apt to mismanage her love-affairs; but Teresa, -sitting staring at the comedy through half-closed eyes -with fascinated irritation, would be certain that the -letter contained nothing but an announcement of Paris -models, or the ticket for a charity ball.</p> - -<p>Teresa felt like some one of presbyopic and astigmatic -sight, doomed to look fixedly all day long at a very -small object at very close quarters; and this feeling -reached an unusual degree of exacerbation on the day -that Concha went up to London to dine with Rory -Dundas. At seven o’clock she began to follow every -stage of her toilette; the bath cloudy with salts, a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span> -bottle of which she was sure to have taken up in her -dressing-case; then the silk stockings drawn on—“oh -<i>damn</i> that Parker! She’s sent me a pair with a ladder”; -silk shift, stays, puffing out her hair, mouth full of gilt -hair-pins; again and again pressing the bell till the -chambermaid came to fasten up her gown; on with her -evening cloak and down into the hall where Rory would -be standing waiting in an overcoat, a folded-up opera -hat in his hand, his hair very sleek from that loathsome -stuff of his—“Hulloooah!” “Hulloa! Hulloa! -I say ... <i>some</i> frock!” and then all through dinner -endless topical jokes.</p> - -<p>Oh it was unbearably humiliating ... and how she -longed for Pepa: “Teresa darling! You must be mad. -He really <i>isn’t</i> good enough, you know. I’m sure he -never opens a book, and I expect he’s disgustingly -bloodthirsty about the Germans. But if you really -like him we must arrange something—what a pity May-Week -is such a long way off.”</p> - -<p>What <i>did</i> she see in him? He was completely without -intellectual distinction; he had a certain amount of -fancy, of course, but fancy was nothing—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Tell me where is Fancy bred?</div> - <div class="verse indent4"><i>Not</i> in the heart</div> - <div class="verse indent4"><i>Nor</i> in the head</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">nearly all young Englishmen had fancy—a fancy fed -by <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>, and the goblin arabesques on -the cover of <i>Punch</i>; a certain romantic historical sense -too that thrills to <i>Puck of Pook’s Hill</i> and the <i>Three -Musketeers</i>—oh yes, and, unlike Frenchmen, they probably -all cherish a hope that never quite dies of one day -playing Anthony to some astonishingly provocative -lady—foreign probably, passionate and sophisticated as -the heroine of <i>Three Weeks</i>, mysterious as Rider<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span> -Haggard’s <i>She</i>. But all that is just part of the average -English outfit—national, ubiquitous, undistinguished, -like a sense of humour and the proverbial love of fair -play.</p> - -<p>Yes; their minds were sterile, frivolous ... <i>un-Platonic</i>—that -was the word for expressing the lack -she felt in the emotional life of the Rorys, the Ebens, -and all the rest of that crew; un-Platonic, <i>because -they could not make myths</i>. For them the shoemaker -at his last, the potter at his wheel, the fishwives of -the market-place, new-born babies and dead men, -never suddenly grew transparent, allowing to glimmer -through them the contours of a stranger world. -For them Dionysus, whirling in his frantic dance, never -suddenly froze into the still cold marble of Apollo.</p> - -<p>Concha came back from her outing uncommunicative -and rather cross. She was evidently irritated by the -unusual eagerness shown by the Doña with regard to -her coming dinner with David Munroe.</p> - -<p class="tb">One day Anna tackled Teresa over the doctrine of -Transubstantiation.</p> - -<p>“I’ve never believed in fairies and things,” she said, -“and this sounds much more untruer—<i>is</i> it true?”</p> - -<p>Teresa looked at her square, sensible little face—though -without the humour, so ridiculously like Harry’s -in shape and expression—and her heart sank.</p> - -<p>What <i>could</i> she say?</p> - -<p>Einstein—Bergson—Unamuno ... their theories were -supposed to provide a loophole.</p> - -<p>She began to mutter idiotically:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Una—muno—mena—mo,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Catch a nigger by his toe.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“But is it true?” persisted Anna.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span></p> - -<p>“Darling, just give me a minute to think,” pleaded -Teresa; and she set about reviewing her own attitude -to her faith.</p> - -<p>Whatever the confessors may say, Catholicism has -nothing to do with dogma ... no, no, that’s not quite -it, dogma is a very important element, but in spite of -not accepting it one can still be a Catholic. Catholicism -is a form of art; it arouses an æsthetic emotion—an -emotion of <i>ambivalence</i>; because like all great art it at -once repels and attracts. When people confronted her -with its intellectual absurdities, she felt as she did, -when, at an exhibition of modern painting, they exclaimed: -“but whoever saw hands like <i>that</i>?” or -“why hasn’t he given her a nose?”</p> - -<p>Of course, this peculiar æsthetic emotion is not to be -found in every manifestation of Catholicism—it has to -be sought for; for instance, it is in the strange pages at -the beginning of Newman’s <i>Apologia</i>, where, in his -hushed emaciated English, he tells how, in his childhood -in a remote village, never having seen any of the insignia -of Rome, when dreaming over his lessons he would -cover the pages of his copy-books with rosaries and -sacred hearts. And, when sitting one evening in the -cemetery at the bottom of the hill on which stands -Siena, she had got the emotion very strongly from the -contrast between the lovely Tuscan country, the magnificently -poised city, the sinister black-cowled <i>confraternité</i> -that was winding down the hill, each member -carrying a lighted torch—between all this and the -cemetery itself where, among the wreaths of artificial -flowers, there was stuck up on each grave a cheap -photograph of the deceased in his or her horrible Sunday -finery, with a maudlin motto inscribed upon the frame. -In the contrast too in Seville between Holy Week, the -pageantry of which is organised by the parish priests—a -wooden platform, for instance, carried slowly through<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span> -the streets on which stands the august <i>Jesùs de la Muerte</i> -flanked by two huge lighted candles—and the Jesuit -procession a few days later, in which Virgins looking -like <i>ballerinas</i> and apostles holding guitars go simpering -past all covered with paper flowers. One can get it, -too, from reading the <i>Song of Solomon</i> in the terse Latin -of the Vulgate.</p> - -<p>It is an art steeped in a noble classical tradition which -nevertheless makes unerringly for what, outside the vast -tolerance of art, would be considered vulgar and hideous—chromo-lithographs, -blood, mad nuns. This classical -tradition and this taste for the tawdry are for ever -pulling against each other, and it is just this conflict -that gives it, as art, its peculiar <i>cachet</i>.</p> - -<p>This was all very fine; but it would not do for -Anna.</p> - -<p>“Darling, do you think it matters about a thing being -true, as long as it’s ... and, anyway, what exactly do -we mean when we say a thing is true?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know what you mean,” said Anna fretfully, -“do <i>you</i> believe that the clergyman turns that bread -into Jesus Christ?”</p> - -<p>After a second’s hesitation Teresa braced herself and -answered, “Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Well, anyway, Daddy doesn’t, I’m sure and,” Anna -lowered her voice, “I’m sure Mummie didn’t either.”</p> - -<p>“Well, darling, you know no one is going to <i>force</i> you -to believe it—you can do exactly what you like about -it.”</p> - -<p>Then Anna trotted off into the garden and Teresa sat -on, thinking.</p> - -<p>How was she going to cope with Pepa’s children?</p> - -<p>These counter-influences—Plasencia and Cambridge—one -continually undoing the work of the other, were so -very bad for them. Childhood was a difficult enough -time without that.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span></p> - -<p>She remembered the agony of her own struggle to -free herself from the robe of Nessus, woven by suggestion, -heredity, and imperfectly functioning faculties; -was she yet free from the robe? Anyhow, it was better -now than in that awful world of childhood—a world, -as it were, at the bottom of the sea: airless, muted, -pervaded by a dim blue light through which her eyes -strained in vain to see the seaweeds and shells and -skulls in their true shape and colour; a world to which -noises from the bright windy land above would from -time to time come floating down, muffled and indistinct—voices -of newspaper boys shouting “Death of Mr. -Gladstone! Death of Mr. Gladstone!” Snatches of -tunes from <i>San Toy</i>; bells ringing for the relief of -Mafeking.</p> - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>September turned into October; the apples grew -redder and the fields—the corn and barley gradually -being carted away to be stacked in barns—grew plainer, -severe expanses of a uniform buff colour, suggesting to -Teresa the background of a portrait by Velasquez.</p> - -<p>The children were going back to Cambridge; and -their excitement at the prospect might have convinced -the Doña, had she been open to conviction, that their -life there was not an unhappy one.</p> - -<p>They were sorry to leave the Doña and Teresa and -’Snice and the garden—that went without saying; but -the prospect of a railway journey was sufficient to put -Jasper, who never looked very far ahead, into a state -of the wildest excitement, and the occasional nip in the -air during the past week had given Anna an appetite for -the almost forgotten joys of lessons, Girl-Guides, the -“committee” organised by a very grand friend of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span> -twelve for collecting money for the <i>Save the Children</i> -Fund (one was dubbed a member of the committee with -the President’s tennis-racket and then took terrible -oaths of secrecy), and soon Christmas drawing near, -when Nanny would take them down to brilliantly lighted -Boots, with its pleasant smell of leather and violet -powder, to choose their Christmas cards.</p> - -<p>Teresa knew what she was feeling; it was a pleasant -thought, all the small creatures hurrying eagerly back -from sea or hills or valleys all over the kingdom—tiny -Esquimaux swarming back from their isolated summer -fisheries to the civic life of winter with its endless small -activities, so ridiculous to the outside world, so solemn, -and so terribly important, to themselves.</p> - -<p class="tb">Shortly after they had reached Cambridge Teresa got -the following letter from Harry Sinclair:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Teresa</span>,—Since his return from Plasencia -Jasper has been demanding a cake that turns into a -man.</p> - -<p>“At first I supposed I had told him about those gingerbread -dragoons that old Positivist Jackson used to bring -us when we were children at Hastings.</p> - -<p>“I was mistaken.</p> - -<p>“I discover from Anna what he wanted was ‘the true, -real, and substantial presence of the Body of our Lord -Jesus Christ, together with His Soul and Divinity, in -the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist.’</p> - -<p>“Now, look here, Teresa, I won’t stand it. If I notice -any further morbid cravings in Jasper for water, bread, -wine, or oil, I shall stop his visits to Plasencia.</p> - -<p>“It really is insufferable—and you know quite well -that Pepa would have objected as much as I do.</p> - -<p class="center">“Yrs.</p> - -<p class="right">“H. J. S.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span></p> - -<p>It only made Teresa laugh; she knew how Harry must -have enjoyed writing it—could see him jumping on to -his bicycle and hurrying down to the University Library -to verify in one of the books of the late Lord Acton the -definition of Transubstantiation.</p> - -<p>Unfortunately she left it lying about; and it fell -into the hands of the Doña, whom Teresa found in the -act of reading it, with set face and compressed lips.</p> - -<p>At the bottom of her heart the Doña attached as -little importance to it as Teresa had done: the fact of -its having been written to Teresa and not to herself -marked it as being nothing more than a harmless and half -facetious means of relieving his feelings; besides, she -knew that to sever all connection with Plasencia would -be too drastic a step—involving too many complications, -too many painful scenes—also, too dramatic a -step to be taken by Harry in cold blood.</p> - -<p>But there are very few people who have the strength -and poise of intellect to resist, by an honest scrutiny of -facts, the exquisite pleasure of thinking themselves -despitefully used by their enemy—very few too who can -resist the pleasure of avenging this despiteful usage on a -third and, to the vulgar eye, quite innocent person.</p> - -<p>The human soul requires for the play that is its hidden -life but a tiny cast; and to provide parts for its enormous -company it falls back upon the device of understudies, -six or seven sometimes to one part. When this is -properly understood the use of the scapegoat will seem -less unjust.</p> - -<p>Anyhow, the Doña chose to pretend to herself that -she took Harry’s letter seriously; and Dick was chosen -as the scapegoat.</p> - -<p>There is prevalent in Spain a system of barter with -the Deity, the contracts entered into being of the -following nature: If God (or the Virgin or Saint ...) -will make <i>Fulano</i> faithful to <i>Fulana</i>, <i>Fulana</i> will not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span> -enter a theatre for a month; <i>or</i> if God will bring little -Juanito safely through his operation for adenoids, -<i>Fulano</i> will try to love his mother-in-law.</p> - -<p>As a result of Harry’s letter the Doña entered into -such a contract: her Maker was to ensure the ultimate -saving of her grandchildren’s souls; while her part of -the bargain affected Dick and, incidentally, was extremely -agreeable to herself.</p> - -<p>In her bedroom an identical little comedy was enacted -on two separate nights. On its being repeated a third -time, Dick burst out angrily: “Oh, very well then ... -it’s a bit ... no one could say I bothered you much -nowadays.... I know—that damned priest has had -the impertinence to interfere in my affairs.... I -suppose ... I won’t ... <i>very</i> well, then!”</p> - -<p>If it had not been dark he would have seen that the -Doña’s eyes were bright and shining with pleasure.</p> - -<p>For hours he lay awake; a hotch-potch of old -grievances boiling and seething in his mind.</p> - -<p>Always him, always him, giving in every time: that -summer years ago when he had given up golf and -Harlech to take them all to Cadiz instead—<i>very</i> few men -would have done that! And if they were going to a play -always letting one of the children choose what it was to be—and -jolly little gratitude he got for it all! <i>Jolly</i> -little! Snubbed here, ignored there ... glimpses he -had had of other homes came into his head: “hush, -dear, don’t worry father”; “now then, Smith, <i>hurry! -hurry!</i> The master must not be kept waiting”; “all -right, dear, all right, there’s <i>plenty</i> of time.... Gladys -dear, just run and fetch your father’s pipe.... Now, -Charlie, where’s father’s overcoat? Good-bye darling, -I’ll go to the Stores myself this morning and see about -it for you ... good-bye, dear, don’t tire yourself ...” -whereas here it was: “Well, Dick; I really don’t see -how you <i>can</i> have the car this morning—Arnold wants<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span> -it and he’s so seldom here....” Arnold! Arnold! -Arnold! Oh what endless injustice that name conjured -up! Actually it was years since they had had Welsh -rarebit as a savoury because Arnold had once said the -smell made him feel sick ... and oh, the cruelty and -injustice on that birthday when the Doña with an indulgent -smile had asked him what he would like for dinner -(damn her impertinence—as if it wasn’t his own house -and his own food and his own money!), and he had -chosen ox-tail soup, sole, partridge, roly-poly and -marrow-bones—ox-tail soup had been “scrapped” -because Arnold didn’t like it, sole because they’d had -it the night before, roly-poly because Arnold said it -wasn’t a dinner-sweet. As to the marrow-bones—they -had not been “scrapped,” indeed, but as every -one knows, a dish of marrow-bones is a lottery, -and he, Dick, the Birthday King, had drawn a -blank—a hollow mockery, in which a tiny Gulliver -might have sat dry and safe, not a single drop of -grease falling on his wig or his broadcloth. But -Arnold’s had been a lordly bone, dropping at first -without persuasion two or three great blobs of semi-coagulated -amber, and then yielding to his proddings -the coyer treasures of its chinks and crannies, -what time he had cried triumphantly, “More toast, -please, Rendall!” And the Doña had watched him -with a touched and gratified smile, as if she were -witnessing for the first time the incidence of merit and -its deserts. And it was not merely that the unfilial -Arnold had wallowed in grease, not offering out of his -abundance one slim finger of sparsely besmeared toast -to his dry and yearning father, but the Doña had not -cast in his direction one glance of pity—and it was -his birthday, too!... <i>oh</i> that Arnold! Who was -it ... Harry or Guy ... anyway he had heard some -one saying that every father feels like a Frankenstein<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span> -before a grown-up son ... well, not many of them had -as much cause as he had ... despised, snubbed whenever -he opened his mouth. Oh damn that Arnold! -In what did he consider his great superiority to lie? -Curious thing how his luck had always been so -bad: he had not got into the Fifteen at Rugby because -he had put his knee out—so he <i>said</i>; he had failed -to get a scholarship at Trinity because his coach had -given him the wrong text-book on constitutional -history—so he <i>said</i>; he had only got a second in his -tripos, because the Cambridge school of history was -beneath contempt—so he <i>said</i>. And then the War and -all the appalling fuss about him—really, one would -have thought he was fighting the Germans single-handed! -And Dick, creeping about with his tail between his legs -and being made to feel a criminal every time he smiled -or forgot for a second that Arnold was in the trenches -... and, anyhow, if he had been so wonderful, why -hadn’t he the V.C., or <i>at least</i> the Military Cross?</p> - -<p><i>Arnold was a fraud</i> ... and a damned impertinent -one! Well, it was his mother’s fault ... mothers -were Bolsheviks, yes, <i>Bolsheviks</i>—by secret propaganda -begun in the nursery setting the members of a family -against their head. He was nothing to his children—<i>nothing</i>.</p> - -<p>Just for a second he got a whiff of the sweet, nauseating, -vertiginous, emotion he had experienced at the birth -of each of them in turn—an emotion rather like the -combined odours of <i>eau de Cologne</i> and chloroform; an -emotion which, like all the most poignant ones, had a -strong flavouring of sadism; for it sprang from the -strange fierce pleasure of knowing that the body he -loved was being tortured to bear his children.</p> - -<p>Yes, he had loved her ... there had been times ... -well, was he going to put up with it for ever? <i>Oh</i>, how -badly he had been used.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span></p> - -<p>Then it would all begin over again.</p> - -<p>Finally he came to a resolution, the daring of which -(such is the force of habit) half frightened him, while it -made <i>his</i> eyes in their turn bright and shining with -pleasure.</p> - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>The fire of October, which had first been kindled in -a crimson semicircle of beeches burning through a -blanket of mist on the outskirts of Plasencia, spread, a -slow contagion, over all the land. The birch saplings -in the garden became the colour of bracken. The border -was gold and amethyst with chrysanthemums and -Michaelmas daisies. And in the fields there lingered -poppies, which of all flowers look the frailest, yet which -are the last to go.</p> - -<p>Imperceptibly, the breach widened between Teresa and -Concha; Concha had now completely given up pretending -that their relationship was an affectionate one, -and they rarely spoke to each other.</p> - -<p>It was evident, too, that the lack of harmony between -their parents, noticeable since Pepa’s death, had -recently become more pronounced.</p> - -<p>Dick was often absent for days at a time; and one -day Teresa happening to go into the Doña’s morning-room -found her sitting on the sofa looking angry and -troubled, a letter on her lap. Teresa took the letter—the -Doña offering no protest—and read it. I was a -bill to Dick from a London jeweller for a string of pearls. -Puzzled, she looked questioningly at the Doña, who -merely shrugged her shoulders.</p> - -<p class="tb">In the servant’s hall, too, there seemed to be discord, -rumours of which drifted upstairs <i>via</i> Parker the maid,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span> -Parker had a way of beginning in the middle, which -made her plot difficult to follow, but which perhaps had -a certain value as a method of expressing such irrational -things as the entanglement of primitive emotions. Her -stories were like this: “And she said: ‘see you don’t -get Minchin in the garden,’ and Mrs. Rudge said, ‘oh -then some one else’s name would be Walker’; and I -said, ‘if Dale hadn’t been killed in the War <i>he</i> would be -in your cottage and that’s what the War has done for -<i>you</i>!’ and I said, ‘you’ve children, Mrs. Rudge,’ I said, -‘and I hope it won’t come knocking at <i>your</i> door some -day,’ and Lily said, ‘trust Parker to be after an unmarried -man,’ and I said, ‘don’t be so rude, Lily, it’s -Nosey Parker yourself ... even though I don’t go to -chapel!’ That was one for Mrs. Rudge, you see: -oh, they’re a set of beauties!”</p> - -<p>The previous head-gardener, Dale, for whom the -middle-aged Parker had had a <i>tendresse</i>, had been killed -in the War. She looked askance at his successor Rudge -for wearing dead men’s shoes, and for being that unpardonable -thing—a married man; and into the bargain -he was a dissenter. Then there was Minchin, the handsome -cowman, whom Dick was thinking of putting into -the garden....</p> - -<p>It was all very complicated; but seeing that light is -sometimes thrown on the psychology of the hyper-civilised -by the researches of anthropologists among -Bantus and Red Indians, perhaps these tales of Parker -deserved a certain attention—at any rate, behind them -there loomed three tremendous forces: sex, religion -and the dead....</p> - -<p class="tb">One day, to the surprise of every one but the Doña, -there arrived in time for dinner Dick’s dearest friend, -Hugh Mallam.</p> - -<p>He was a huge shaggy creature, if possible, more<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span> -boyish than Dick. He and Dick were delighted at -seeing each other, for Hugh lived in Devonshire and -rarely came as far north as Plasencia, and all through -dinner plied each other with old jokes and old memories; -and from the roars of laughter that reached the drawing-room -after they had been left to themselves they were -evidently enjoying themselves extremely over their -port wine.</p> - -<p>The next morning Teresa coming into the morning-room, -found the Doña and Hugh standing before the -fire, the Doña looking angry and scornful while Hugh, -in an instructive and slightly irritated voice, was saying: -“Sorry, Doña, but I <i>can’t</i> help it ... I can’t help -being the same sort of person with Dick that I’ve -always been ... it’s like that ... I know it’s very -wrong of him and all that, but I can’t help being the -same sort of person with him I’ve always been ... -I....”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, Hugh, you’ve said that before. But do -you realise what a serious thing it is for me and the -children? You <i>seemed</i> very shocked and sympathetic -in your letter—for one thing, a family man simply can’t -afford to spend these sums; then there’s the scandal—so -bad for the business and Arnold ... and you -promised me yesterday....”</p> - -<p>“I know, but I tell you, as soon as I saw old Dick I -knew that I couldn’t lecture him, one can’t change.... -<i>I can’t help being the same sort of person with him I’ve -always been.</i> But I really am most awfully sorry about -it all—the old blackguard!”</p> - -<p>“Well, if you hear that we are ruined, perhaps you’ll -be sorrier still.”</p> - -<p>“That won’t happen—no tragedies ever happen to -any one who has anything to do with me—ha! ha! -They couldn’t, could they, Teresa? I’m much too——”</p> - -<p>“Hush!” said the Doña sharply, suddenly noticing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span> -the presence of Teresa; and, with a look of extreme -relief, Hugh slunk through the French window into the -garden.</p> - -<p>So the Doña had actually been trying to turn Hugh -into their father’s mentor! It was not like her; she -was much too wise not to know that the incorrigibly -frivolous Hugh was quite unsuited to the part.</p> - -<p>Parallel with the infallible wisdom that is the fruit -of our own personal experience, there lie the waste -products of the world’s experience—facile generalisations, -<i>clichés</i>, and so on. Half the follies of mankind are due -to forming our actions along this line instead of along -the other. There, Dick and Hugh were not two human -beings, therefore unique and inimitable, but ‘old school -friends’—and to whose gentle pressure back to the -narrow way is one more likely to yield than to that of -an ‘old school friend’?</p> - -<p>But the very fact of the wise Doña acquiescing in such -a stale fallacy, told of desperation and the clutching at -straws.</p> - -<p>Of course, Hugh was perfectly right—the shape and -colour of his relationship with Dick had been fixed fifty -years ago at the dame’s school in Kensington, to spring -up unchanged all through the years at each fresh -meeting. They could not change it; why, you might -as well go and tell an oak that <i>this</i> spring it was to weave -its leaves on the loom of the elms.</p> - -<p>He had been right, too, in saying there would be no -catastrophe. The fate of Pompeii—a sudden melodramatic -blotting out of little familiar things—would -never, she felt sure, overtake Plasencia. Things at -Plasencia happened very slowly, by means of a long -series of anticlimaxes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span></p> - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>As they sat on the loggia that afternoon reading their -letters after tea, Concha suddenly exclaimed, “Well I’m -<i>blessed</i>!” and laying down her letter began to laugh.</p> - -<p>“Well?” said the Doña.</p> - -<p>“It’s that excellent David Munroe!”</p> - -<p>“What about him?”</p> - -<p>“He writes to say that he’s chucking business and -everything, and is going at once into a seminary to -prepare for ordination—it seems too comical!”</p> - -<p>The Doña’s expression was one of mingled disappointment -and interest; while Jollypot’s cheeks went pink -with excitement. They began to press Concha for -details.</p> - -<p>As to Teresa—somehow or other it gave her a disagreeable -shock.</p> - -<p>Of course, every year hundreds of young men all over -the world had a vocation, went to a seminary, and, in -due time, said their first mass—she ought to be used -to it; nevertheless, she felt there was something ... -something unnatural in the news: a young man who -had business connections with her father, and gave -Concha dinner at the Savoy, and danced to the gramophone—and -then, suddenly hearing this ... she got -the same impression that she did in Paris from a sudden -vision of the white ghostly minarets of the Sacré-Cœur, -doubtless beautiful in themselves, but incongruous in -design, and associations, and hence displeasing in that -gray-green, stucco, and admirably classical city.</p> - -<p>The others drifted off to their various business, and -Teresa sat on, looking at the view.</p> - -<p>It was one of these misty October days when every -landscape looks so magnificent, that, given pencil, brush, -and the power of copying what one sees, it almost seems<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span> -that any one, without going through the eclectic process -of creation, could paint a great picture. The colours -were blurred as if the intervening atmosphere were a -sheet of bad glass; and the relationship between the -old rose of ploughed fields, the yellow strips of mustard, -and the brighter gold and pink of the sunflowers, -chrysanthemums, and Michaelmas daisies in the border, -made one think of an oriental vase painted with dim -blossoms and butterflies in which is arranged a nosegay -of bright and freshly plucked flowers—the paintings on -the porcelain melting into the flowers, the flowers -vivifying the colours on the porcelain.</p> - -<p>That is what the relationship between life and art -should be like, she thought, art the nosegay, life the -porcelain vase.</p> - -<p>Life could not be shot on the wing—it must first be -frozen.... Myths that simplified and transposed so -that things became as the chairs and sofa had been that -day in her Chelsea lodgings ... heliacal periods ... -Apollo and Dionysus ... it was all the same thing. -If only she could find it, life at Plasencia had some -design, some plot ... yes, that was it—a <i>plot</i> that enlarged -and simplified things so that they could be seen.</p> - -<p>What was life at Plasencia like? A motley hostile -company sailing together in a ship as in Cervantes’s -<i>Persiles</i>?</p> - -<p>No; it still had roots; night and day it still stared -at the same view; externally, it was immobile. It was -more like a convent than a ship, an ill-matched company -forced to live together under one roof, which one and all -they long to leave.</p> - -<p>A sense of discomfort came over her at the word -“convent”: long bare corridors hung with hideous -lithographs; hard cold beds; shrewish vulgar-tongued -bells summoning one to smoked fish; an insipid calligraphy; -“that by the intercession of Blessed Madeleine<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span> -Sophie Barat, Virgin, through her devotion to thy -Sacred Heart” ... it certainly had <i>ambivalence</i>—it -was the great Catholic art she had tried to define to -herself when confronted with doubting Anna; but it -was not Plasencia.</p> - -<p>“Nunnery” was a better word, a compact warm word, -suggesting hives and the mysterious activities of bees -... it had an archaic ring too ... yes, art always -exists in the past (if not why is the present tense never -used?)—it is the present seen as the past.</p> - -<p>A nunnery, then, long ago—Boccaccio’s Fiammetta, -as a full-blown carnation splits its calyx, her beauty -bursting through her novice’s habit, receiving in the -nunnery parlour all the amorous youth of Naples. And -yet it was not the same as if she had received them in -a boudoir of the world. The nunnery’s rule might be lax -but it remained a rule; and that, artistically, was of -very great value—vivid earthly passion seen against -the pale tracery of Laud, Nones, Vespers. And at -Plasencia too—out there in the view life was enacted -against a background of Hours: <i>ver</i>, <i>aetas</i>, <i>autumnus</i>, -<i>hiems</i>—to call them by their Latin names made them -at once liturgical.</p> - -<p>A nunnery, long ago ... where? Not in Italy; -for that would be out of harmony with the colour scheme -of Plasencia—not so with Spain, from the stuff of which -they were knit, so many of them. A Spanish play -(because a play is the best vehicle for a plot) much more -brightly coloured than Plasencia, “Cherubimic,” as -manuscripts illuminated in very bright colours used to -be called ... the action not merely in Spain, but -in their own Seville ... Moorish Seville ... hence a -play, written like the letters to Queen Elizabeth from -eastern potentates, “on paper which doth smell most -fragrantly of camphor and ambergris, and the ink of -perfect musk.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span></p> - -<p>And the plot? Well, that was not yet visible; but -the forces behind it would be sex, religion, and the -dead.</p> - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>October turned into November. At first some belated -chrysanthemums, penstemmons, and gentians, kept the -flag of the border gallantly flying; then Rudge cut it -down to the bare wood of stalks a few inches high, -which showed between them the brown of the earth.</p> - -<p>Out in the country, for a time, a pink and gold spray -of wild briar garlanded here and there the thorny -withered hedges; and then their only ornament became -the red breast of an occasional robin, his plump body -balanced on his thin hairy legs, which were like the -stalks of the tiny Cheshire pinks that one sees in rock -gardens.</p> - -<p>Everywhere the earth was becoming depalliated and -self-coloured; and on one of her walks Teresa came upon -a pathetic heap of feathers.</p> - -<p>In autumn the oriflamme of the spectrum had been -red; now it was blue—a corrugated iron roof, for -instance. And soon the whole land was wintry and blue; -a blue not of vegetation but of light, light, which lay in -hollows like patches of blue-bells, which glinted along -the wet surface of the high road, turning it into an azure -river upon which lay, like yellow fritillaries, the golden -dung dropped by calves led to market; and through the -golden birches the view, too, lay delicate and blue.</p> - -<p>Then black and white days would come, when the -sun looked like the moon, and a group of trees like a -sketch in charcoal of a distant city.</p> - -<p class="tb">There was nothing new at Plasencia: Dick still sulked -at meals; the Doña’s face was cold and set; Concha<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span> -was <i>distraite</i> and went a great deal to London; Parker -complained of the Rudges; only Jollypot and ’Snice -went their ways in an apparently unclouded serenity.</p> - -<p>Teresa was absorbed by a weekly parcel of books from -the London Library; charming mediæval books in -that pretty state of decomposition when literature is -turning into history and has become self-coloured, the -words serving the double purpose of telling a tale -and of illuminating it with small brightly coloured -pictures, like the toys in the pack of Claudel’s Saint -Nicholas:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Il suffit que j’y fasse un trou et j’y vois des choses vivantes et toutes petites</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Le Déluge, le Veau d’Or, et la punition des Israélites....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Of Seville she already knew enough to serve her purpose, -having several years before, during a winter she had -spent there with her mother’s sister, gone every morning -to the University to read in the public library; and, as -it contains but few books of later date than the eighteenth -century, she had read there many a quaint work -on the history and customs of old Seville. And, fascinated -by its persistent Moorish past, she had dipped a -little into the curious decorative grammar of the Arabs, -in which, so it seemed to her, infinitives, and participles, -and adjectives, are regarded as variations of an ever-recurring -design of leaf or scroll in a vast arabesque -adorning the walls of a mosque.</p> - -<p>Looking over the notes she had made at that time, -under the heading <i>Spanish Chestnuts</i> she came upon -two little fables she had written on the model of the -Arab apologues which were circulated during the Middle -Ages all over Spain; and, with the dislike of waste that -is so often a characteristic of the artist, she decided that,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span> -if it were possible, she would make use of them in the -unwritten play.</p> - -<p>Like every other visitor to Seville she had been -haunted by that strange figure, more Moor than -Christian, Pedro the Cruel; for, materially and spiritually, -his impress is everywhere on the city—there are -streets that still bear the names of his Jewish concubines, -the popular ballads still sing of his justice, his cruelty, -and his tragic death; while his eternal monument is -the great Moorish palace of the Alcazar within whose -walls Charles-Quint himself, though his home was half -of Europe, remained ever an alien—it is still stained by -his blood, and in its garden, through the water of her -marble bath, the limbs of his love, Maria Padilla, still -gleam white to the moon.</p> - -<p>So it was natural that she should fix upon his reign -as the period of the play; and hence, though she read -promiscuously the literature of the Middle Ages, her -focus was the fourteenth century.</p> - -<p>All the same, she had qualms. Might she not “queer -her pitch” by all this reading? A sense of the Past -could not be distilled from a mass of antiquarian -details; it was just because the Present was so rank -with details that, by putting it in the Past, she was -trying to see it clean and new. A sense of the Past is -an emotion that is sudden, and swift, and perishable—a -flash of purple-red among dark trees and bracken as -one rushes past in a motor-car, and it is already half -a mile behind before one realises that it was rhododendrons -in full flower, and had one had time to explore -the park one would have found its acres of shade all -riddled with them, saturated with them. An impression -like this is not to hold or to bind. And yet ... -she had seen a picture by Monticelli, called <i>François I. -et les dames de sa cour</i>, of which the thick flakes of dark, -rich colour, if you but stood far enough away,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span> -glimmered into dim shapes of ladies in flowered silks -and brocades, against a background of boscage clustering -round a figure both brave and satyr-like—the king. -Something dim and gleaming; fragmentary as De -Quincey’s dream.</p> - -<p>“Often I used to see a crowd of ladies, and perhaps a -festival and dances. And I heard it said, or I said to -myself, ‘These are English ladies from the unhappy -time of Charles I.’ The ladies danced and looked as -lovely as the Court of George IV., yet I knew, even in -my dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly -two centuries.”</p> - -<p><i>Yet I knew, even in my dream, that they had been in -the grave for nearly two centuries</i>—yes, that was it. -You must make your readers feel that they are having -a waking vision; and your words must be “lonely,” -like Virgil’s; they must be halting and fragmentary -and whispered.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless she went on with her reading, and, as -though from among the many brasses of knights with -which is inset the aisle of some church, their thinly traced -outlines blurred and rubbed by time and countless -feet, one particular one were slowly to thicken to a -bas-relief, then swell into a statue in the round, then -come to life—gray eyes glittering through the vizor, -delicately chased armour clanking, the church echoing -to oaths in Norman-French,—so gradually from among -the flat, uniform, sleeping years of the Middle Ages did -the fourteenth century come to life in Teresa’s mind.</p> - -<p>Beyond the Pyrenees it was a period of transition—faith -was on the wane. She found a symbol of the age -in Boccaccio’s vow made not at the shrine of a saint, but -at Virgil’s grave; not a vow to wear a hair-shirt or to -die fighting the Saracens, but to dedicate all his life to -the art of letters. And, when terrified by the message -from the death-bed of Blessed Pietro Pietroni, he came<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span> -near to breaking his vow and falling backwards into -the shadows, in the humane sanity of Petrarch’s letter—making -rhetoric harsh and mysticism vulgar—she heard -the unmistakable note of the Renaissance.</p> - -<p>And in France, too, the writer of the second part of the -<i>Roman de la Rose</i> has earned the title of “le Voltaire du -moyen age.”</p> - -<p>But on the other side of the Pyrenees the echo of this -new spirit was but very faint.</p> - -<p>Shut in between the rock of Gibraltar and by these -same Pyrenees sits Our Lady of the Rocks, Faith ... -alone; for heresies (Calvinism being the great exception) -are, Teresa came to see, but the turning away of the -frailer sisters, Hope and Charity, from the petrifying stare -of their Gorgon but most beautiful sister.</p> - -<p>But in those days, though as stern, she was a plainer -Faith. It was not till after the Council of Trent that -she developed the repellent beauty of a great picture: -the tortured conversion of St. Ignatius de Loyóla, the -Greco-esque visions of Santa Teresa de Jesùs, the -gloating grinning crowd in the <i>Zocodover</i> of Toledo lit -up by the flames of an auto-da-fé into one of the goblin -visions of Goya, were still but tiny seeds, broadcast and -sleeping. Catholicism had not yet lost the monumental -austerity of the primitive Church; its blazon -was still the Tree of the Fall and the Redemption -springing from Peter’s rock.</p> - -<p>But, all the time, the doctrine of Transubstantiation, -woven by the “angelic doctor” round the Sacrifice of -the Mass, was slowly, surely coming to its own, and -Jehovah was turning into the Lord God of the Host.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</h2> - -</div> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p>Dr. Sinclair and the children, Guy, Rory, and, of course, -Arnold, were to spend Christmas at Plasencia.</p> - -<p>By tea-time on the twenty-third they had all arrived -except Rory, who was motoring down from Aldershot -in his little “two-seater.”</p> - -<p>Harry Sinclair, a big massive brown man, his fine head -covered with crisp curls, was standing on the hearth-rug -devouring hunks of iced cake and, completely -indifferent as to whether he had an audience or not, was, -in his own peculiar style—hesitating attacks, gropings -for the right word which, when found, were trumpeted, -bellowed, rather than uttered—delivering a lecture of -great wit and acumen.</p> - -<p>The Doña and Arnold—he scowling heavily—were -talking in low tones on the outskirts of the circle; while -Dick would eye them from time to time uneasily from -his arm-chair.</p> - -<p>The children—to celebrate their arrival—were having -tea in the drawing-room, and both were extremely -excited.</p> - -<p>Anna’s passion for stamps was on the wane, and she no -longer dreamed of Lincoln’s album so bulgy that it would -not shut. She was now collecting the Waverley Novels -in a uniform edition of small volumes, bound in hard -green board and printed upon India paper; and following -some mysterious sequence of her own that had -nothing to do with chronology, she had “only got as -far as the <i>Talisman</i>.” She was wondering if there was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span> -time before Christmas Day to convey to the Doña—very -delicately of course—in what directions her desires -now lay.</p> - -<p>“The ... er ... chief merit of Shakespeare is that -he is so ... er ... admirably ... er ... <span class="smcap">prosaic</span>. -The qualities we call prosaic exist only in verse, and -<i>vice versa</i>....” (“How funny!” thought Anna, both -pleased and puzzled, “Daddy is talking about <i>Vice -Versa</i>.” She was herself just then in the middle of -Anstey’s <i>Vice Versa</i>.) “For instance ... er ... the -finest fragments of Sappho are ... er ... merely -an ... er ... <span class="smcap">unadorned statement of facts</span>! -Don’t you agree, Cust?”</p> - -<p>This purely rhetorical appeal elicited from Guy a -shrieking summary of his own views on poetry; Harry’s -eyes roving the while restlessly over the room, while now -and then he gave an impatient grunt.</p> - -<p>In the meantime tea and cake were going to Jasper’s -head. He began to wriggle in his chair, and pretend to -be a pig gobbling in a trough. As the grown-ups were -too occupied to pay any attention, it was Anna who had -to say: “Jasper! <i>Don’t</i> be silly.”</p> - -<p>But he was not to be daunted by Anna; drawing one -finger down the side of his nose he squealed out in the -strange pronunciation he affected when over-excited: -“Play Miss Fyles-Smith come down my nose!” (Miss -Fyles-Smith, it may be remembered, was the “lady -professor” who sometimes worked with Dr. Sinclair.)</p> - -<p>The Doña stopped suddenly in the middle of something -she was saying to Arnold, raised her <i>lorgnette</i>, and -looked at Harry; he was frowning, and, with an impatient -jerk of the head, turned again to Guy: “Well, -as I was saying, Cust....”</p> - -<p>It might, of course, be interpreted quite simply as -merely momentarily irritation at the idiotic interruption.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span></p> - -<p>“You see,” began Anna in laborious explanation, -“he pretends that there’s a real Miss Fyles-Smith and a -pretence one, and the pretence one is called ‘play Miss -Fyles-Smith,’ and whenever he gets silly he wants -people to come down his nose, and....”</p> - -<p>Then there was a laugh in the hall, discreetly echoed -by Rendall the butler.</p> - -<p>“Hallo! That’s Rory,” said Concha, and ran out -into the hall.</p> - -<p>Teresa felt herself stiffening into an attitude of -hostile criticism.</p> - -<p>“Here he is!”</p> - -<p class="tb">First entry of the <i>jeune premier</i> in a musical play:</p> - -<p>“Well, guuurls, here we are again,” while the Beauty -Chorus crowds round him and he chucks the prettiest -one under the chin. Then—bang! squeak! pop! goes -the orchestra and, running right up to the footlights, -the smirking chorus massed behind him, he begins half -singing, half speaking:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">When I came back from sea</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The guuurls were waiting for me.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Well, at last it was over and he was sitting at a little -table eating muffins and blackberry jam.</p> - -<p>“What have I been doing, Mrs. Lane? Oh, I’ve -been leading a blameless life,” and then he grinned and, -Teresa was convinced, <i>simultaneously</i> caught her eye, -the Doña’s, Concha’s, and Jollypot’s.</p> - -<p>She remembered when they were children how on their -visits to the National Portrait Gallery, Jollypot used to -explain to them that the only test of a portrait’s having -been painted by a great master was whether the eyes -seemed simultaneously fixed upon every one in the room; -and they would all rush off to different corners of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span> -gallery, and the eyes would certainly follow every one -of them. The eyes of a male flirt have the same -mysterious ubiquity.</p> - -<p>“I do think it’s most extraordinary good of you to -have me here for Christmas. I feel it’s frightful cheek -for such a new friend, but I simply hadn’t the strength -of mind to refuse—I <i>did</i> so want to come. I know -I <i>ought</i> to have gone up to Scotland, but my uncle really -much prefers having his goose to himself. He’s a sort -of Old Father William, you know, can eat it up beak -and all.... Yes, the shops <i>are</i> looking jolly. I got -stuck with the little car in a queue in Regent Street the -other day and I longed to jump out and smash the -windows and loot everything I saw. I say, Guy, you -ought to write a poem about Christmas shops....”</p> - -<p>“Well, as a matter of fact, it <i>is</i> an amazing <i>flora</i> -and <i>fauna</i>,” cried Guy, moving away from Harry -and the fire: “Sucking pigs with oranges in their -mouths, toy giraffes ... and all these frocks—Redfern -mysteriously blossoming as though it were St. John’s -Eve, the wassail-bowl of Revell crowned with imitation -flowers....”</p> - -<p>“Go it! Go it!” laughed Rory.</p> - -<p>“Oh Rory, it was too priceless—do you remember -that exquisite <i>mannequin</i> at Revell’s, a lovely thing -with heavenly ankles? Well, the other day I was at -the Berkeley with Frida and ...” and Concha successfully -narrowed his attention into a channel of her own -digging.</p> - -<p>What energy to dig channels, to be continually on the -alert, to fight!</p> - -<p>Much better, like Horace’s arena-wearied gladiator, -to seek the <i>rudis</i> of dismissal.</p> - -<p>The Doña made a little sign to Arnold, and they -both got up and left the room, Dick suspiciously following -them with his eyes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span></p> - -<p>The talk and laughter like waves went on beating -round Teresa.</p> - -<p>Now Guy was turning frantic glances towards her and -talking louder and more shrilly than usual—evidently -he thought he was saying something particularly -brilliant, and wanted her to hear it.</p> - -<p>“Bergson seems to look upon the intellectuals as so -many half-witted old colonels, living in a sort of Bath, -at any rate a geometrical town—all squares and things, -and each square built by a philosopher or school of -thought: Berkeley Square, Russell Square, Oxford -Crescent....”</p> - -<p>“Well, the War did one good thing, at any rate, it -silenced Bergson,” said Harry impatiently, “I don’t -think he has any influence now, but not being er ... -er ... a Fellow of <span class="smcap">King’s</span>, I’m not well up in what ... -er ... the <span class="smcap">young</span> are thinking.”</p> - -<p>“Oh well, here <i>are</i> the young—you’d better ask ’em,” -chuckled Dick, since the departure of his wife and son, -once more quite natural and genial: “Anna, do you -read Bergson?”</p> - -<p>“No!” she answered sulkily and a little scornfully—she -liked the “grown-ups” to pay her attention, but -not <i>that</i> sort of attention.</p> - -<p>“There you are, Harry!” chuckled Dick triumphantly; -though what his cause was for triumph must -remain a mystery.</p> - -<p>“Quite right, old thing! I don’t read him either—much -too deep for you and me. What <i>are</i> you -reading just now?” said Rory, beckoning her to his -side.</p> - -<p>She at once became friendly again: “I’m reading -<i>Vice Versa</i>,” and she chuckled reminiscently, “And ... -I’ve just finished the <i>Talisman</i> ... and I’d like to read -<i>Kenilworth</i>.”</p> - -<p>What a pity the Doña was not there to hear! But<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span> -perhaps one of them would tell her what she had said, -and she would guess.</p> - -<p>“Which do you like best, Richard Cœur de Lion or -Richard Bultitude?” asked Guy.</p> - -<p>“<i>Richard</i> Bultitude!” laughed Rory scornfully, “Do -you hear that, Anna? He thinks the old buffer’s name -was Richard! But we know better; <i>we</i> know it was -Paul, don’t we?”</p> - -<p>Anna would have liked to have shared with Rory an -appearance of superior knowledge; but honesty forced -her to say: “Oh but the little boy was Richard Bultitude—Dickie, -you know; his real name was Richard.”</p> - -<p>“There, Rory! There!” shouted Guy triumphantly.</p> - -<p>“Do you remember that girl’s—I can’t remember her -name, that one that shoots a <i>billet-doux</i> at Mr. Bultitude -in church—well, her papa, the old boy that gave the -responses all wrong ‘in a loud confident voice,’ doesn’t -he remind you rather of Uncle Jimmy?” said Rory -to Guy.</p> - -<p>“The best character in ... er ... that book is -the German master, who ... er ...” began Harry.</p> - -<p>“Oh <i>yes</i>, a <i>heavenly</i> creature—‘I veel make a leetle -choke to agompany it’!” shrieked Concha.</p> - -<p>“I hate Dulcie—I think she’s silly,” said Anna; but -no one was listening to her, they were launched upon a -“grown-up” discussion of <i>Vice Versa</i> that might last -them till it was time to dress for dinner ... a rosy -English company, red-mufflered, gaitered, bottle-green-coated, -with shrieks of laughter keeping the slide -“boiling” in the neighbourhood of Dingley Dell.</p> - -<p>Teresa, as usual, sitting apart, felt in despair—what -could be done with such material? A ceaseless -shower of insignificant un-co-related events, and casual, -ephemeral talk ... she must not submit to the tyranny -of detail, the gluttony that wanted everything ... she -must mythologise, ruthlessly prune ... hacking away<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span> -through the thick foliage of words, chopping off the -superfluous characters, so that at last the plot should -become visible.</p> - -<p>Anna, rather resenting that what she looked upon as -a children’s book should be commandeered by the -grown-ups for their own silly talk in which she could -not share, went off to the billiard-room to play herself -tunes on the gramophone.</p> - -<p>Jasper had long since sneaked off with ’Snice for a -second tea in the kitchen.</p> - -<p>Then Guy left the group of Anstey amateurs and -came and sat down beside Teresa.</p> - -<p>“Have you been reading anything?” he asked; and -without waiting for an answer, and slightly colouring, -he said eagerly: “I’ve been learning Spanish, you -know.”</p> - -<p>“Have you? Do you like it?”</p> - -<p>And that was all! How often had he rehearsed the -conversation, or, rather, the disquisition, that ought at -this point to have arisen: “Those who know the -delicate sophistication of <i>Lazarillo de Tormes</i> feel less -amazement when from an <i>Amadis</i>-pastoral Euphues-rotted -Europe an urbane yet compelling voice begins -very quietly: ‘In a village of la Mancha, the name of -which I do not care to recollect, there lived not long -ago a knight’....”</p> - -<p>And surely she might have shown a little emotion—was -it not just a little touching that entirely for her sake -he should have taken the trouble to learn Spanish?</p> - -<p>“Well, what have you been reading in Spanish—the -<i>Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse</i>?”</p> - -<p>Though this was only a joke, he felt sore and nettled, -and said sulkily: “What’s that? I’ve never heard -of it.”</p> - -<p>“You lie, Guy, you lie! You have heard of the <i>Four -Horsemen of the Apocalypse</i>, and you have heard of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span> -<i>If Winter Comes</i>; because from what you tell me of -your parents they probably talk of both incessantly, -and....”</p> - -<p>“You’re quite right, as a matter of fact,” laughed -Guy, delighted that she should remember what he had -told her about the manners and customs of his parents, -“they talked of nothing else at one time. It made -them feel that at last they were able to understand and -sympathise with what my generation was after. My -father began one night at dinner, ‘Very interesting book -that, Guy, <i>If Winter Comes</i>—very well written book, -very clever; curious book—painful though, painful!’ -And my mother tried to discuss some one called Mabel’s -character with me. It was no good my saying I hadn’t -read it—it only made them despise me and think I -wasn’t <i>dans le mouvement</i>, after all.”</p> - -<p>“There, you see!” laughed Teresa; “Well, what -<i>are</i> you reading in Spanish?”</p> - -<p>“Calderon’s <i>Autos</i>,” and then he launched into one of -his excited breathless disquisitions: “As a matter of -fact, I was rather disappointed at first. I knew, of -course, that they were written in glorification of the -Eucharist and that they were bound to be symbolic, -and ‘flowery and starry,’ and all the rest of it—man -very tiny in comparison with the sun and the moon and -the stars and the Cross—but the unregenerate part of -me—I suppose it’s some old childhood’s complex—has -a secret craving for <i>genre</i>. Every fairy story I read -when I was a child was a disappointment till I came -upon Morris’s <i>Prose Romances</i>, and then at last I found -three dimensional knights and princesses, and a whole -fairy countryside where things went on happening even -when Morris and I weren’t looking at them: cows being -milked, horses being shod, lovers wandering in lanes; -and one knew every hill and every tree, and could take -the short cut from one village to another in the dark.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span> -And I’d hoped, secretly, that the <i>autos</i> were going to -be a little bit like that ... that the characters would -be at once abstractions—Grace, the Mosaic Law, and -so on—<i>and</i> at the same time real seventeenth century -Spaniards, as solid as Sancho Panza, gossiping in -taverns, and smelling of dung and garlic. But, of -course, I came to see that the real thing was infinitely -finer—the plays of a theologian, a priest who had -listened in the confessional to disembodied voices -whispering their sins, and who kept, like a bird in a -cage, a poet’s soul among the scholastic traditions of -his intellect, so that gothic decorations flower all round -the figure of Theology, as in some Spanish Cathedral ...” -he paused to take breath, and then added: “I say—I -thought you wouldn’t mind—but I’ve brought you -for Christmas an edition of the <i>Autos</i>—I think you’ll -like them.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you ever so much, I should love to read -them,” said Teresa with unusual warmth.</p> - -<p>She had been considerably excited by what he had -said. An <i>auto</i> that was at once realistic and allegorical—there -were possibilities in the idea.</p> - -<p>She sat silent for a few seconds, thinking; and then -she became conscious of Harry’s voice holding forth on -some topic to the group round the fire: “... really -... er ... a ... er ... <span class="smcap">tragic</span> conflict. The one -thing that gave colour and ... er ... significance to -her drab spinsterhood was the conviction that these -experiences were supernatural. The spiritual communion -... the ... er ... er ... in fact the <span class="smcap">conversations</span> -with the invisible ‘Friend’ became more -and more frequent, and more and more ... er ... -<i>satisfying</i>, and indeed of nightly occurrence. Then she -happened to read a book by Freud or some one and ... -er ... <span class="smcap">the fat was in the fire</span>—or, rather, something -that undergoes a long period of smouldering before<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span> -it breaks into flames was in the fire. Remember, she -was nearly fifty, and a Swiss Calvinist, but she had -really <i>remarkable</i> intellectual pluck. Slowly she began -to test her mystical experiences by the theories of -Freud and Co., and was forced in time to admit that -they sprang <i>entirely</i> from ... er ... suppressed ... -er ... er ... <span class="smcap">erotic</span> desires. I gather the modern -school of psychologists hold all so-called mystical -experiences <i>do</i>. Leuba said....”</p> - -<p>Here Jollypot, who had been sitting in a corner with -her crochet, a silent listener, got up, very white and -wide-eyed, and left the room.</p> - -<p>Teresa’s heart contracted. They were ruthless -creatures, that English fire-lit band—tearing up Innocence, -while its roots shrieked like those of a mandrake.</p> - -<p>But she had got a sudden glimpse into the inner life -of Jollypot.</p> - -<p>Then she too, left the room; as for once the talk had -been pregnant, and she wanted to think.</p> - -<p>Sexual desires concealed under mystical experiences -... a Eucharistic play. Unamuno said that the -Eucharist owed its potency to the fact that it stood for -immortality, for life. But it was also, she realised, -the “bread not made of wheat,” therefore it must -stand for the man-made things as well—these vain yet -lovely yearnings that differentiate him from flowers -and beasts, and which are apt to run counter to the life -he shares with these. The Eucharist, then, could stand -either for life, the blind biological force, or for the enemy -of life—the dreams and shadows that haunt the soul -of man; the enemy of that blind biological force, yes, -but also its flower, because it grows out of it....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span></p> - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>The days of Christmas week passed in walks, dancing, -and talk in the billiard-room.</p> - -<p>On Christmas Day Rory had given Concha a volume -of the Harrow songs with music, and to the Doña -an exquisite ivory hand-painted eighteenth-century -fan with which she was extremely pleased; indeed, to -Teresa’s surprise, he had managed to get into her good -graces, and they had started a little relationship of their -own consisting of mock gallantry on his side and good-natured -irony on hers.</p> - -<p>As to Concha, she had taken complete possession of him -and seemed to know as much about his relations—“Uncle -Jimmy,” “old Lionel Fane” and the rest of -them—as he did himself; she knew, too, who had been -his fag at Harrow and the names of all his brother -officers; in fact, the sort of things that, hitherto, she -had only known about Arnold; and Arnold evidently -was not overpleased.</p> - -<p>One day a little incident occurred in connection with -Arnold that touched Teresa very much. Happening to -want something out of her room she found its entry -barred by him and the Doña, she superintending, while -he was nailing on to the door a small piece of canvas -embroidered with the Sacred Heart of Jesus.</p> - -<p>“We won’t be a minute,” said the Doña serenely; -and Arnold, scowling and rather red, silently finished his -job. By the end of the morning there was not a room -in the house that had not the Sacred Heart nailed on -its door. Dick being by this time too cowed to protest.</p> - -<p>Teresa knew how Arnold must have loathed it; but -he evidently meant by his co-operation to make it clear -once and for all that he was on his mother’s side in the -present crisis as opposed to his father’s.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span></p> - -<p>In connection with the undercurrent of life at Plasencia, -another little scene is perhaps worth recording.</p> - -<p>“By the way, Guy,” said Rory, one morning they -were sitting in the billiard-room, “How are Uncle Roger -and Aunt May getting on in Pau?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, same old thing—mother plays croquet and goes -to the English Church, and father plays golf and goes -to the English Club. Sometimes they motor over to -Biarritz to lunch with friends—and that’s about all!”</p> - -<p>“Well, and a jolly good life too! That’s how <i>I’ll</i> -spend the winter when I’m old, only I won’t go to Pau, -I’ll go to Nice—there’s a better casino. And what’s -more, I’ll drag <i>you</i> there, Guy. It would do him a lot -of good, wouldn’t it, Miss Lane?” and Rory grinned -at Teresa, who, staring at Guy critically through -narrowed eyes, said: “I don’t think he’ll need any -dragging. I can see him when he’s old—an extremely -<i>mondain</i> figure in white spats, constantly drinking tea -with duchesses, and writing his memoirs.”</p> - -<p>Guy looked at her suspiciously—Mallock, certainly, -drank tea with duchesses and wrote his memoirs; not -a bad writer, Mallock! But probably Teresa despised -him; Swinburne had been a dapper <i>mondain</i> figure in -his youth—what did she mean exactly?</p> - -<p>“Poor old Guy!” laughed Rory, “I can see him, too—a -crusty old Tory, very severe on the young and their -idiotic poetry.... I expect you’re a violent Socialist, -Miss Lane, ain’t you?”</p> - -<p>Foolish, conventional young man, going round sticking -labels on every one! Well, so she was labelled “a -Socialist,” and that meant “high-browed,” and undesirable; -But why on earth did she mind?</p> - -<p>Concha was looking at her with rather a curious little -smile. She sometimes had an uncomfortable feeling -that Concha was as good at reading <i>her</i> thoughts as she -was as reading Concha’s.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span></p> - -<p>“She is a Socialist like you, isn’t she, Guy?” persisted -Rory.</p> - -<p>“He means an intellectual character,” explained Guy, -not ill-pleased.</p> - -<p>“No, but you do want to blow us all up, don’t you?”</p> - -<p>“Do I?” said Teresa coldly.</p> - -<p>“Well, I believe I’m a Bolshevik myself, a revolution -would be my only chance of getting into the Guards. -‘Hell-for-leather Dundas of the Red Guards!’ It -sounds like a hero by ... that mad woman our -mothers knew in Florence, Guy—what was her name?... -Yes, like a hero in a Ouida novel.”</p> - -<p>“Do I hear you say, Dundas, that you think yourself -like one of ... er ... Ouida’s heroes?” said Harry -Sinclair, coming in at that moment with Dick.</p> - -<p>“Well, sir, modesty forbids me to say so in so many -<i>words</i>,” grinned Rory.</p> - -<p>“There used to be an aged don at Cambridge,” continued -Harry, “half-blind, wholly deaf, and with an -... er ... game ... <span class="smcap">leg</span>, and when he was asked to -what character in history he felt most akin he answered -... er ... er ‘<span class="allsmcap">ALCIBIADES</span>’!”</p> - -<p>“That was old Potter, wasn’t it? I remember ...” -began Dick, but Concha interrupted him by exclaiming -eagerly: “What a good game! Let’s play it—history -or fiction, but we mustn’t say our own, we must guess -each other’s’—Rory is settled, he thinks himself like a -Ouida hero ...” and she suddenly broke off, turned -red, and looked at Teresa with that glazed opaque look -in her eyes, that with her was a sign of mingled embarrassment -and defiance.</p> - -<p>Teresa’s heart began to beat a little faster; who -would Concha say she, Teresa, thought herself like? -And who would <i>she</i> say Concha thought herself like? -It would perhaps be a relief to them both to say, for once, -things that were definitely spiteful—a relief from this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span> -continual X-raying of each other’s thoughts, and never -a word said.</p> - -<p>“Who does Guy think himself like? Some one very -wicked and beautiful—don’t you, Guy?” said Rory.</p> - -<p>“Dorian Gray!” said Arnold, looking up from his -book with a meaning grin.</p> - -<p>“Oh no, no, I’m sure it’s some very literary character,” -said Concha.</p> - -<p>“Shelley?” suggested Teresa; but she gave the little -smile that always seemed scornful to Guy.</p> - -<p>“Percy Bysshe ... is she right, Guy?”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Guy sulkily.</p> - -<p>“Shakespeare—Tennyson—Burns? Who, then?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Keats if you like—when he was in love with -Fanny Brawne,” cried Guy furiously, and, seizing the -book that lay nearest to him, he began to read it.</p> - -<p>“I say, this <i>is</i> a lovely game—almost as good as -cock-fighting!” said Rory: “What about Mr. Lane? -I wonder who <i>you</i> think you are like, sir.”</p> - -<p>Tactful young man, so anxious to make his host feel -at home!</p> - -<p>Dick, who had been dreading this moment, looked -sheepish. It seemed to him that the forehead of every -one in the room slid sideways like a secret panel revealing -a wall upon which in large and straggling characters -were chalked up the words: <span class="allsmcap">DON JUAN</span>. And Teresa -was saying to herself: “Would it be vulgar ... -should I dare to say Lydia Bennett? And who will she -say? Hedda Gabler?”</p> - -<p>She had forgotten what the game really was and had -come to think it consisted of telling the victim the -character that you <i>yourself</i> thought they resembled.</p> - -<p>“Who does Mr. Lane think he’s like?” repeated -Rory.</p> - -<p>“Drake, I should think,” said Guy, who never sulked -for long.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span></p> - -<p>Dick felt unutterably relieved.</p> - -<p>“Is that right, sir?”</p> - -<p>“That will do—Drake if you like,” said Dick, with a -laugh.</p> - -<p>“A Drake somewhat ... er ... cramped in his -legitimate activities through having ... er ... -married an ... er ... <span class="allsmcap">SPANISH LADY</span>,” said Harry.</p> - -<p>What the devil did he mean exactly by that? Surely -the Doña hadn’t been blabbing to him—Harry of all -people! But she was capable of anything.</p> - -<p>“Oh yes, the Doña would see to it he didn’t singe the -King of Spain’s beard twice,” laughed Concha.</p> - -<p>Oh yes, of course, <i>that</i> was it! He laughed aloud with -relief.</p> - -<p>And then followed a discussion, which kept them busy -till luncheon, as to whether it could be proved by -Mendelism that the frequent singeing of Philip II.’s beard -was the cause of his successors having only an imperial.</p> - -<p>So here was another proof of the fundamental undramaticness -of life as lived under civilised conditions—for -ever shying away from an emotional crisis. As usual, -the incident had been completely without point; and -on and on went the frivolous process of a piece of thistle-down -blown by a summer breeze hither, thither, nowhere, -everywhere.</p> - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Before the party broke up there was a little dance -at Plasencia. It was to be early and informal so as -not to exclude “flappers”; for, as is apt to be the way -with physically selfish men, Arnold found grown-up -young ladies too exacting to enjoy their society and -preferred teasing “flappers.” Fair play to him, he -never flirted with them; but he certainly liked them.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span></p> - -<p>So the drawing-room was cleared of furniture, a -scratch meal of sandwiches substituted for dinner, and -by eight o’clock they were fox-trotting to the music of a -hired pianist and fiddler.</p> - -<p>The bare drawing-room, robbed of all the accumulated -accessories of everyday life, was the symbol of -what was happening in the souls of the dancers—Dionysus -had come to Thebes, and, at the touch of his -thyrsus, the city had gone mad, had wound itself round -with vine tendrils, was flowing with milk and honey; -where were now the temples, where the market-place?</p> - -<p>Teresa, steered backwards and forwards by Bob -Norton, felt a sudden distaste for mediæval books—read -always with an object; a sudden distaste, too, for that -object itself, which was riding her like a hag. Why not -yield to life, become part of it, instead of ever standing -outside of it, trying to snatch with one’s hands fragments -of it, as it went rushing by?</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Whirled round in life’s diurnal course</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With rocks and stones and trees.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">That was good sense; that was peace. But away -from Plasencia ... yes, one must get away from -Plasencia.</p> - -<p>For once, they were all beset by the same desire—to -slip off silently one night, leaving no trace.</p> - -<p>“Why shouldn’t I really get that yacht and slip off -with Hugh ... to Japan, say ... and no one know? -It’s a free country and I’ve got the money—there’s -nothing to prevent me doing what I want. To sail -right away from Anna ... and ... and ... <i>every -one</i>,” thought Dick, as, rather laboriously, he gambolled -round with the young wife of a rich stockbroker who -had a “cottage” near Plasencia.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span></p> - -<p>As to Concha—she had sloughed her own past and -present and got into Rory’s—she seemed to <i>be</i> Rory: -lying in his study at Harrow after cricket sipping a -water-ice, which his fag had just brought him from the -tuck-shop ... “hoch!” and a tiny slipper shoots up -into the air—“the beautiful Miss Brabazons,” the -belles of the Northern Meeting!... “H.M. the King -and the Prince of Wales motored over from Balmoral -for the—Highland games. There were also present -...” flags flying, bands playing ... hunting before -the War—zizz! Up one goes—over gates, over hedges -... no gates, no hedges, no twelve-barred gates of -night and day, no seven-barred gates of weeks, just -galloping for ever over the boundless prairie of eternity—far -far away from Plasencia and them all.</p> - -<p>Only the dowagers, watching the dancers from a little -conservatory off the drawing-room, had their roots deep -in time and space—a row of huge stone Buddhas set up -against a background of orchids and bougainvillea and -parroquet-streaked jungle, which were their teeming -memories of the past; but set up immovably, and they -would see to it that no one should escape.</p> - -<p>“There!” said Rory, gently pushing Concha into a -chair, “where’s your cloak?”</p> - -<p>“Don’t want one.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you’d better. Which is your room? Let me -go and fetch you one.”</p> - -<p>“But I tell you I don’t <i>want</i> one!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, by the way, I meant to ask you, why did you -walk on ahead with Arnold this afternoon?”</p> - -<p>“Did I?”</p> - -<p>“Of course you did. I had to walk with your sister—she -scared me to death.”</p> - -<p>Then there was a pause.</p> - -<p>“Concha!”</p> - -<p>“Hallo!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span></p> - -<p>He gave a little laugh, took her in his arms, and kissed -her several times on the mouth.</p> - -<p>“You didn’t kiss me back.”</p> - -<p>“Why should I?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t believe you know how to!”</p> - -<p>“<i>Don’t</i> I?”</p> - -<p>He kissed her again.</p> - -<p>“What a funny mouth you’ve got—it’s soft like a -baby’s.”</p> - -<p>“You’d better be careful—some one might come -along, you know, at any moment.”</p> - -<p>“Would they be angry?... You <i>are</i> a baby!”</p> - -<p>“Rory! The music’s stopping.”</p> - -<p>Rory began talking in a loud voice: “Well, as I was -saying, Chislehurst golf is no good to me at all. I like -a course where you have plenty of room to open your -shoulders.”</p> - -<p>“You <i>are</i> a fool!” laughed Concha.</p> - -<p>The next dance was a waltz.</p> - -<p>“The <i>Blue Danube</i>! I’m <i>so</i> glad the waltz is coming -into fashion again,” said Mrs. Moore, tapping her black-satin-slippered -foot in time to the tune, and watching -her sixteen-year old daughter Lettice whirl round with -Arnold.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said the Doña, “I’m fed up with rag-time.”</p> - -<p>“Dear Mrs. Lane, these slangy expressions sound -so deliciously quaint when you use them—don’t they, -Lady Norton? And that reminds me, I’ve had such a -<i>killing</i> letter from Eben....”</p> - -<p>But no one listened, and soon she too was silent; for, -at the strains of the <i>Blue Danube</i>, myriads of gold and -blue butterflies had swarmed out of the jungle and -settled on the Buddhas. They still stared in front of -them impassively, they were still firm as rocks; but they -were covered with butterflies.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Mais le vert paradis des amours enfantines</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Les courses, les chansons, les baisers, les bouquets</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Les violons vibrant derrière les collines,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Avec les brocs de vin le soir dans les bosquets</div> - <div class="verse indent0">—Mais le vert paradis des amours enfantines,</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">L’innocent paradis, plein de plaisirs furtifs,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Est-il déjà plus loin que l’Inde ou que la Chine?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Peut-on le rappeler avec des cris plaintifs,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et l’animer encore d’une voix argentine,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">L’innocent paradis plein de plaisirs furtifs?</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“Waltzes are milestones of sentimentality,” said Guy -shrilly to Teresa, as they made their way onto the -loggia to sit out the remainder of the dance, “milestones -of sentimentality, because a lady can be dated -by the fact of whether it’s the <i>Blue Danube</i>, or the -<i>Sourire d’Avril</i>, or the <i>Merry Widow</i>, that glazes her eye -and parts her lips—taking her back to that charming -period when the heels of Mallarmé’s <i>débutantes</i> go tap, -tap, tap, when in a deliciously artificial atmosphere sex -expands and, like some cunning hunted insect, makes -itself look like a flower; I haven’t yet read <i>A l’Ombre -des Jeunes Filles en Fleur</i>, but I’m sure it’s an exquisite -description of that period—débutantes, and waltzes, -and camouflaged sex. Its very title is like the name of -a French waltz—or scent.”</p> - -<p>Teresa smiled vaguely.... Why had she scorned -that period, barricading herself against it with books, -and Bach and ... myths? When she was old and -heard the strains of ... yes, the <i>Chocolate Soldier</i> ought -to be her milestone ... well, when she hears the -<i>Chocolate Soldier</i>, if her eyes glaze and her lips part -it will be out of mere bravado.</p> - -<p>But something was happening ... what was it Guy -was saying?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span></p> - -<p>“I never think of anything else but you ... you’re -the only person whose mind I admire ... even if you -don’t realise it you <i>must</i> see that you ought to.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Guy, what do you want? What is it all about?” -she gasped helplessly.</p> - -<p>“Well then, could you? You see, it seems to me so -obvious and....”</p> - -<p>“Marry you?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>She saw herself established in St. James’s Street -polishing his brasses, rub, rub, rub; polishing his verses -perhaps too ... oh no, he didn’t like verses to be -polished—roughening them, then, with emery-paper ... -oh no, that polished too ... what was it, then, that -roughened?</p> - -<p>She began to giggle ... oh Lord, <i>that</i> had done it! -Now he was furious—and with reason.</p> - -<p>“... Your arrogance ... simply unbearable.... -I don’t know <i>what</i> you think ... oh it’s damnable!” -and he began to sob.</p> - -<p>She took his hand and stroked it, murmuring: -“Hush! old Guy ... I wasn’t laughing at you, it -was just one of those sudden silly thoughts that have -nothing to do with anything. Nothing seems real -to-night. I’m really very very grateful.”</p> - -<p>“Will you then?” and his face brightened.</p> - -<p>“No, no, Guy—I <i>can’t</i>. It would be so ... so ... -meaningless.”</p> - -<p>Then fresh sobs, and like a passionate, proud child he -tore away his hands, and plunged into the dark garden. -What could she do? She could only leave him to get -over it.</p> - -<p>Life was never still; though, like the earth, one did -not feel it move ... one’s human relations were -ever shifting, silently, like those of the constellations. -Suddenly one night one looks up at the sky and realises<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span> -that Orion has reappeared and that the Great Bear is -now standing on the tip of his tail, and one gasps at -the vast spaces that have been silently traversed; and -it was with the same sensation of awe that she looked -back on the past year and realised the silent changes in -the inter-relations of her little group: her parents’ -relations, her own and Concha’s, her own and Guy’s.</p> - -<p>A low voice came from the morning-room; it was -the Doña’s: “Whatever Pepa’s opinions or wishes may -have been during the latter part of her life, they are -the same as mine now.”</p> - -<p>“Upon my soul! You evidently ... er ... er -have sources of ... er ... <span class="smcap">information</span> closed to -the rest of us—I really cannot ... er ... <span class="smcap">cope</span> with -such statements” and Harry came out on to the loggia, -evidently irritated beyond endurance. He was followed -by the Doña; but when she saw Teresa and realised -that the opportunity for a <i>tête-à-tête</i> was over, having told -her to get a wrap, she went in again.</p> - -<p>Harry walked up and down for a few seconds, in -silence, and then ejaculated ironically: “Remarkable -woman, your mother!” “Very!” said Teresa coldly; -she did not choose to discuss her with Harry.</p> - -<p>“Of course, in the light of ... er ... modern -psychology it’s as clear as a pike-staff,” he went on, as -usual not reacting to the emotional atmosphere, “she -... er ... doesn’t ... er ... <span class="smcap">know</span> it, of course, -but she’s putting up this Catholicism as a barrier to -your marriages—every mother is jealous of her -daughters.”</p> - -<p>Oh, these scientific people! Always right, and, yet, -at the same time, always absurdly wrong! For the -real sages, the people who <i>live</i> life, these ugly little -treasures found by the excavators miles and miles and -miles down into the human soul, are of absolutely no -value ... horrid little flints that have long since<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span> -evolved into beautiful bronze axes ... it was only -scientists that cared about that sort of thing. For all -practical purposes it was an absolute libel on the Doña—but, -<i>dramatically</i>, it might be of value; for dramatic -values have nothing to do with truth.</p> - -<p>“Our dance, I think, Miss Lane. I couldn’t find -you anywhere”; it was Rory’s voice.</p> - -<p>He led her into the drawing-room, and they began -to move up and down, round and round, among the -other solemn and concentrated couples, all engaged in -too serious an exercise to indulge in any conversation -beyond an occasional: “Sorry!” “Oh, <i>sorry</i>!”</p> - -<p>When they passed Concha, she and Rory smiled at -each other, and he said: “Telegrams: <i>Oysters</i>.”</p> - -<p>That meant: “We are both rather hungry, but never -mind, it won’t be long now till supper—Hurray!”</p> - -<p>How humiliating it was to be so familiar with their -jargon!</p> - -<p>She looked at him; his eyes were stern, and fixed on -some invisible point beyond her shoulder, his lips were -slightly parted. She was no more to him than the -compass with which Newton in Blake’s picture draws -geometrical figures on the sand.</p> - -<p>Then the music stopped.</p> - -<p>“Shall we sit here?”</p> - -<p>He had become human again.</p> - -<p>“It <i>has</i> been a lovely dance—I do think it’s so -awfully good of you all to have me down for Christmas.”</p> - -<p>How many times exactly had she heard that during -the last week? Once before to herself, twice to the -Doña, once to her father, once to Jollypot.</p> - -<p>“Oh, we liked having you. We generally have lots -of people for Christmas.”</p> - -<p>“Well, one couldn’t have a more Christmassy house. -It always seems to me like the house one suddenly comes<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span> -upon in a wood in a fairy story. One expects the door -to be opened by a badger in livery.”</p> - -<p>Again that bastard Fancy! The same sort of thing -had occurred to her herself—<i>when</i> she was a child; but -the imagination of a man ought to be different from the -fancy of a child.</p> - -<p>“It’s the sort of house one can imagine a Barrie play -happening in, don’t you think? Did you see <i>Dear -Brutus</i>?”</p> - -<p>“Yes; I did.”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t like the girl much—what was her name? -Margaret, wasn’t it? I’m sure her papa starved her—I -longed to take her and give her a good square meal.” -Pause.</p> - -<p>She wondered what it would feel like to be the sort -of young woman who could interest and allure him. -And what were the qualities needed? It could not be -brains, for she had plenty of brains; nor looks, for she -was good-looking. But nothing about her stirred him; -she knew it.</p> - -<p>“Of course, it’s an extraordinary hard life, an actress’s,” -he went on, “it’s a wonder that they keep their looks -as they do. It’s a shame! Women seem handicapped -all along the line,” and he looked at her expectantly, as -if sure of her approval at last, “It can’t be much fun -being a woman, unless one were a very beautiful one ... -or a very clever one, of course,” he added hastily.</p> - -<p>Well, the cat was out of the bag: she was plain as -well as undesirable.</p> - -<p>Suddenly, Dionysus and his rout vanished from -Thebes; temples and market-place sprang up again, -and she remembered joyfully that a fresh packet of -books ought to arrive to-morrow from the London -Library.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span></p> - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>Most of the guests not staying in the house had left -by midnight; but after that, when the party had -dwindled down to four or five couples, the pianist and -fiddler, mellowed by champagne and oysters, were -persuaded to give first one “extra,” then another, then -another.</p> - -<p>The pianist, a very anæmic-looking young woman, -with a touching absence of class-jealousy, was loath to -disappoint them, and, as far as she was concerned, they -might have gone on having extras till broad daylight; -but the fiddler “turned stunt.”</p> - -<p>“I’m a family man” he protested good-humouredly, -but firmly (“You’ll have to wait till to-morrow night -for <i>that</i>, old bean!” Rory whispered to Arnold, “your -wife wouldn’t like it at two o’clock in the morning”), -“But I don’t mind ending up with <i>John Peel</i>, as it’s -Christmas time,” whereupon, with a wink to the pianist, -he struck up with that most poetical of tunes, and, the -men of the party bellowing the words, they all broke -into a boisterous gallop.</p> - -<p>Rory went up to the Doña: “You <i>must</i> dance this -with me, please!”</p> - -<p>She yielded with a smile; but her eye caught Arnold’s, -and they both remembered that it had been Pepa who -used always to play <i>John Peel</i> at the end of their dances.</p> - -<p>The tune ended with what means to be a flourish, -but really is a wail, and they stood still, laughing -and breathless—a little haggard, a little dishevelled.</p> - -<p>“Where’s Guy?” said some one.</p> - -<p>“He went up to bed; he had a headache,” said -Arnold, glaring fiercely at Teresa.</p> - -<p>Out in the view, from behind the two-ply curtains of -silk and of night, a cock crew, and then another; and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span> -what they said was just <i>John Peel</i> over again—that -ghosts wander in dewy English glades, and that the -Past is dead, dead, dead.</p> - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>Concha came into Teresa’s room to have her gown -unfastened: “You looked heavenly,” she said, “I love -you in mauve.”</p> - -<p>Teresa tugged at the hooks in silence; and then said: -“Is it impossible to teach Parker to unsqueeze hooks -when they come back from Pullar’s?”</p> - -<p>“Quite. I nearly died with the effort of getting -them to fasten.”</p> - -<p>Then outside there was a familiar muffled step, and a -knock. In the mirror Teresa saw a look of annoyance -pass over Concha’s face.</p> - -<p>In came the Doña, in a white dressing-gown, her face -illuminated by the flame of her candle, and looking not -unlike one of Zurburán’s Carthusian monks.</p> - -<p>“Well?” she said.</p> - -<p>“Well darling,” answered Concha, with exaggerated -nonchalance, adding to Teresa, “<i>won’t</i> they undo?”</p> - -<p>The Doña put down her candle, and seated herself -heavily on the bed.</p> - -<p>“Oh, damn them! Won’t they undo? Haven’t -you any scissors?”</p> - -<p>“That young Dundas seemed to enjoy himself,” said -the Doña.</p> - -<p>No answer.</p> - -<p>Then the hooks yielded at last to the leverage of the -nail-scissors, and Concha kissed the Doña and Teresa -and went back to her own room.</p> - -<p>The Doña sat on.</p> - -<p>“Do you think he is attracted by Concha?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span></p> - -<p>“Who?”</p> - -<p>“That young Dundas.”</p> - -<p>“I really don’t know ... do you want him to be?”</p> - -<p>“Do I want him to be? What has that to do with -it? I want to know if he <i>is</i>.”</p> - -<p>“Do you mean does he want to marry her?”</p> - -<p>“Marry her! Englishmen never think of marriage -... they just what you call ‘rag round’; they can’t -even fall in love.”</p> - -<p>Teresa scrutinised her for a few seconds, and then -she said: “I believe you are furious with every man -who doesn’t fall in love with one of your daughters;” -and she suddenly remembered a remark of Concha’s -made in a moment of intense irritation: “The Doña -ought to keep a brothel—then she would be really -happy.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</h2> - -</div> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p>That year winter was so mild as to be almost indistinguishable -from spring. Imperceptibly, the sparse -patches of snow, the hyacinthine patches of blue light -lying in hollows of the hills, in wrinkles of the land, turned -into small waxen leafless flowers, watching, waiting, in -the grass.</p> - -<p>By the beginning of February the song of the birds -had begun; a symbol that to most hearts is almost -Chinese, the symbol and its idea being so indistinguishable -that it seems that it is Hope herself who is perched -out there on the top of the trees, singing.</p> - -<p>One day one would suddenly realise that the mirabelle -and purple prunus were actually out; but blossom is -such a chilly thing, and it arrives so quietly, that -it seemed to make no difference in that leafless -world.</p> - -<p>Then would come a day when the air was exquisitely -soft and the sky very blue; and between the sky and -earth there would seem to be a silent breathless conspiracy. -Not a bud, only silence; but one knew that -something would soon happen. But the next morning, -there would be an east wind—skinning the bloom -off the view, turning the sky to lead, and making the -mirabelle and prunus look, in their leaflessness, so bleak -that they might have been the flower (in its sense -of <i>essence, embodiment of</i>), of the stern iron qualities of -January. The singing of the birds, too, became a cold, -cold sound, as if the east wind was, like the ether, a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span> -medium through which we hear as well as see. But -such days were rare.</p> - -<p>Dick loved early spring. When the children were -little they used to have “treasure-hunts” at their -Christmas parties. They would patter through drawing-room, -dining-room, hall, billiard-room, finding, say, -an india-rubber duck in the crown of a hat, or a -bag of sweets in a pocket of the billiard-table; and -Dick’s walks through the grounds in these early spring -days were like these “treasure-hunts”; for he would -suddenly come upon a patch of violets under a wall, -or track down a sudden waft of perfume to a leafless -bush starred with the small white blossoms of winter-sweet, -or—greatest prize of all—stand with throbbing -heart by the hedges of yew, gazing into a nest with -four white eggs, while he whispered: “Look -Anna!”</p> - -<p>For this was the first year that he had gone on these -hunts alone.</p> - -<p>To tell the truth, he was very tired of his <i>liaison</i>. -The lady was expensive, and her conversation was -insipid. Also ... <i>perhaps</i> ... his blood was not -<i>quite</i> as hot as it had once been.</p> - -<p>“Buck up, old bean! What’s the <i>matter</i> with you?” -... <i>The fires within are waning</i> ... where had he -heard that expression? Oh yes, it was what Jollypot -had said about that old Hun conductor, Richter, when, -years ago, they had taken her to Covent Garden to -hear <i>Tristan</i>—how they had laughed! It was such a -ridiculous expression to use about such a stolid old Hun -and, besides, it happened to be quite untrue, Pepa and -Teresa had said.</p> - -<p>“What’s the matter with you to-night, you juggins?” -<i>The fires within are waning</i> ... it was all very well -to laugh, but really it was rather a beautiful expression.... -Good Lord! It wasn’t so many years before he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span> -would be reaching his grand climacteric.... Peter -Trevers died then, so did Jim Lane.</p> - -<p class="tb">One morning he noticed the Doña standing stock-still -in the middle of the lawn, staring at something through -her <i>lorgnette</i>. She was smiling. “What a beautiful -mouth she has!” he thought, as he drew nearer.</p> - -<p>Softly he came up and stood beside her, and discovered -that what she was watching was a thrush that -was engaged, by means of a series of sharp rhythmic -pecks, in hauling out of the ground the fat white coils -of an enormous worm.</p> - -<p>It reminded him of a Russian song that his lady -had on her gramophone, the <i>Volga Boat Song</i>—the -haulers on the Volga sang it as they hauled in the ropes.... -<i>I-i-sh-tscho-rass</i> he began to hum; she looked up -quickly: “You remember that?”</p> - -<p>“What?” he asked nervously. In answer, she sang -to the same tune: <i>Ma-ri-nee-ro</i>, and then said: “The -sailors used to sing it at Cadiz, that autumn we spent -there ... when the children were little.”</p> - -<p>“By Jove, yes, so they did!” he answered with a -self-deprecatory laugh.</p> - -<p>The thrush had now succeeded in hauling up almost -the whole length of the worm; and it lay on the ground -really very like the coils of a miniature rope. Then -suddenly he lost the rhythm, changed his method to a -series of little jerky, impatient, ineffectual desultory -taps, pausing between each to look round with a bright -<i>distrait</i> eye; and, finally, when a few more taps would -have finished the job, off he hopped, as if he could bear -it no longer.</p> - -<p>“Silly fellow!” said the Doña.</p> - -<p>Dick was racking his brain in the hopes of finding -some link between thrushes and Pepa.... “Pepa -was very fond of thrushes” ... but was she?...<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span> -“Pepa with the garden hose was rather like that thrush -with the worm” ... and wasn’t there an infant -malady called “thrush” ... had Pepa ever had it? -no, no, it wouldn’t do; later on an apter occasion would -arise for some tender little reconciliatory reminiscence.</p> - -<p>“You know, I had little Anna and Jasper baptised -into the Catholic Church at Christmas,” said the Doña -suddenly, and, as it seemed to Dick, quite irrelevantly; -but her voice was unmistakably friendly.</p> - -<p>“By Jove ... did you really?”</p> - -<p>“I did. I arranged it with Father Dawson. The -children enjoyed keeping it a secret from Harry.”</p> - -<p>Dick chuckled; the Doña smiled.</p> - -<p>“Next year little Anna will make her first Communion.”</p> - -<p>“Does she want to?” Dick had never noticed in his -grand-daughter the slightest leanings to religion.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know. There are compensations,” and -again the Doña smiled.</p> - -<p>“What? a new Girl-Guide kit?”</p> - -<p>“No; the complete works of Scott.”</p> - -<p>“My dear Anna—you ought to have been the General -of the Jesuits!”</p> - -<p>The Doña looked flattered.</p> - -<p>“Well, Dick,” she went on in a brisk, but still friendly -voice, “we really must decide soon—<i>are</i> we going to -have pillar-roses or clematis at the back of the borders? -Rudge says....”</p> - -<p>They spent a happy, amicable morning together; and -at luncheon their daughters were conscious that the -tension between them had considerably relaxed.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span></p> - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>One sunny evening, walking in his pleasance, and -weaving out of memories chaplets for a dear head, as, in -the dead years, he had woven them out of those roses, -white and damask, the Knight of La Tour-Landry -resolved to compile, from the “matter of England, -France and Rome,” a book for the guidance of his -motherless daughters.</p> - -<p>In that book Teresa read the following <i>exemplum</i>:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“It is contained in the story of Constantinople, there -was an Emperor had two daughters, and the youngest -had good conditions, for she loved well God, and prayed -him, at all times that she awaked, for the dead. And -as she and her sister lay a-bed, her sister awoke and -heard her at her prayers, and scorned and mocked her, -and said, ‘hold your peace, for I may not sleep for -you.’ And so it happened that youth constrained them -both to love two brethren, that were knights, and were -goodly men. And so the sisters told their council each -to other. And at the last they gave the Knights tryst -that they should come to lie by them by night privily -at certain hour. And that one came to the youngest -sister, but him thought he saw a thousand dead bodies -about her in sheets; and he was so sore afraid and afeard, -that he ran away as he had been out of himself, and -caught the fevers and great sickness through the fear -that he had, and laid him in his bed, and might not stir -for sickness. But that other Knight came into that -other sister without letting, and begat her with child. -And when her father wist she was with child, he made -cast her into the river, and drench her and her child, -and he made to scorch the Knight quick. Thus, for -that delight, they were both dead; but that other sister<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span> -was saved. And I shall tell you on the morrow it was -in all the house, how that one Knight was sick in his -bed; and the youngest sister went to see him and asked -him whereof he was sick. ‘As I went to have entered -between the curtains of your bed, I saw so great number -of dead men, that I was nigh mad for fear, and yet I -am afeard and afraid of the sight.’ And when she heard -that, she thanked God humbly that had kept her from -shame and destruction.... And therefore, daughters, -bethink you on this example when ye wake, and sleep -not till ye have prayed for the dead, as did the youngest -daughter.”</p> - -</div> - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Towards the end of February Teresa heard excited -voices coming from the Doña’s morning-room. She -went in and found the Doña sitting on the sofa with a -white face and blazing eyes, her father nervously shifting -the ornaments on the chimneypiece, and Concha -standing in the middle of the room and looking as -obstinate as Caroline the donkey.</p> - -<p>“Teresa!” the Doña said in a very quiet voice, -“Concha tells us she is engaged to Captain Dundas.”</p> - -<p>But of course!... had not Parker said that there -was “the marriage likeness” between them—“both -with such lovely blue eyes?”</p> - -<p>“And he has written to your father—we have just -received this letter,” and the Doña handed it to her: -“From the letter and from her we learn that Captain -Dundas has perverted her. She is going to become a -Protestant.”</p> - -<p>There was a pause; Concha’s face did not move a -muscle.</p> - -<p>“The reason why she is going to do this is that -Captain Dundas would be disinherited by his uncle if<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span> -he married a Catholic. What do you think of this -conduct, Teresa?”</p> - -<p>Concha looked at her defiantly.</p> - -<p>“I don’t ... I ... if Concha doesn’t believe in -it all, I don’t see why she should sacrifice her happiness -to something she doesn’t believe in,” she found herself -saying.</p> - -<p>Concha’s face relaxed for a second, and she flashed -her a look of gratitude.</p> - -<p>“Teresa!” cried the Doña, and her voice was inexpressibly -reproachful.</p> - -<p>Dick turned round from the chimneypiece: “Teresa’s -quite right,” he said; “upon my soul, it would be madness, -as she says, to sacrifice one’s happiness for ... -for that sort of thing.”</p> - -<p>“Dick!”</p> - -<p>And he turned from the cold severity of the -Doña’s voice and eye to a re-examination of the -ornaments.</p> - -<p>As to Teresa, though his words had been but an echo -and corroboration of her own, she was unreasonable -enough to be shocked by them; coming, as they did, -from a descendant of the men who had witnessed the -magnificent gesture with which Ridley and Latimer had -lit a candle in England.</p> - -<p>“Well, Teresa, as you think the same as Concha ... -I don’t know what I have done.... I seem to have -failed very much as a mother. It must be my own -fault,” and she laughed bitterly.</p> - -<p>Concha’s face softened: “Doña!” she said appealingly.</p> - -<p>“Concha! Are you really going to do this terrible -thing?”</p> - -<p>“I must ... it’s what Teresa said ... I mean ... -it would be so mad not to!”</p> - -<p>“I see—it would be mad not to sell Jesus for thirty<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span> -pieces of silver. Well, in that case, there is nothing -more to be said ... and you have your father and -sister as supporters,” and again she laughed bitterly.</p> - -<p>Concha’s face again hardened; and, with a shrug, -she left the room.</p> - -<p>There was silence for a few seconds, and Teresa -glanced mechanically at the letter she held in her hand: -“... won’t think it frightful cheek ... go rather -gently while I’m at the Staff College ... my uncle ... -Drumsheugh ... allowance ... will try so hard to -make Concha happy ... my uncle ... Drumsheugh -... hope Mrs. Lane won’t mind frightfully ... the -Scottish Episcopal Church ... very high, it doesn’t -acknowledge the Pope, that’s the only difference.”</p> - -<p>Suddenly the Doña began to sob convulsively: “She -... is ... my child, my baby! Oh, none of you -understand ... none of you <i>understand</i>! It’s my -fault ... I have sinned ... I ought never to have -married a Protestant. My Pepa ... my poor Pepa -... she knows <i>now</i> ... she would stop it if she could. -Oh, <i>what</i> have I done?”</p> - -<p>Teresa kneeled down beside her, and took one of her -cold hands in hers; she herself was cold and trembling—she -had only once before, at Pepa’s death, seen her -mother break down.</p> - -<p>Dick came to her other side, and gently stroked her -hair: “My dear, you’ve nothing to blame yourself for,” -he said, “and there are really lots of good Protestants, -you know. And I’ve met some very broad-minded -Roman Catholics, too, who took a ... a ... sensible -view of it all. These Spanish priests are apt....”</p> - -<p>“Spanish priests!” she cried, sitting up in her -chair and turning blazing eyes upon him, “what do -<i>you</i> know of Spanish priests? You, an elderly Don -Juan Tenorio!”</p> - -<p>Dick flushed: “Well, I <i>have</i> heard you know ...<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span> -those priests of yours aren’t all so mighty immaculate,” -he said sullenly.</p> - -<p>“Dick! How—<i>dare</i>—you?” and having first frozen -him with her stare, she got up and left the room.</p> - -<p>Dick turned to Teresa: “For heaven’s sake,” he said, -“do make your mother see that Protestants are -Christians too, that they aren’t all blackguards.”</p> - -<p>“It would be no good—that’s really got nothing to -do with it,” said Teresa wearily.</p> - -<p>“Nothing to do with it? Oh, well—you’re all too -deep for <i>me</i>. Anyhow, it’s all a most awful storm in a -teacup, and the thing that really makes her so angry -is that she knows perfectly well she can do nothing to -prevent it. Well, do go up to her now.... <i>I</i> daren’t -show my face within a mile ... get her some <i>eau-de-Cologne</i> -or something. ’Snice! ’Snice, old man! Come -along then, and look at the crocuses,” and, followed by -’Snice, he went through the French window into the -garden.</p> - -<p>Yes; her father had been partly right—a very bitter -element in it all was that the passionate dominant Doña -could do nothing to prevent the creatures of her body -from managing their lives in their own way. What help -was it that behind her stood the convictions of the -multitudinous dead, the “bishops, priests, deacons, -sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, lectors, porters, confessors, -virgins, widows, and all the holy people of God?” -She and they were powerless to arrest the incoming tide -of life; she had identified herself with the dead—with -what was old, crazy, and impotent, and, therefore, she -was pre-doomed to failure.</p> - -<p>Teresa had a sudden vision of the sinful couch (according -to the Doña’s views) of Concha and Rory, infested -by the dead: “I say, Concha, what a frightful bore! -They ought to have given us a mosquito-net.” “Oh -Lord! Well, never mind—I’m simply <i>dropping</i> with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span> -sleep.” And so to bed, comfortably mattressed by the -shrouds of the “holy people of God.”</p> - -<p>She went up and tried the Doña’s door, but found it -locked. She felt that she ought next to go to Concha, -upon whom, she told herself, all this was very hard—that -she, who had merely set out upon the flowery path that -had been made by the feet of myriads and myriads of -other sane and happy people since the world began, -should have her joy dimmed, her laughter arrested, by -ghosts and other peoples’ delusions. But, though she -told herself this, she could not feel any real pity; her -heart was as cold as ice.</p> - -<p>However, she went to Concha’s room, and found her -sitting at her desk writing a letter—probably a long -angry one to that other suffering sage, Elfrida Penn.</p> - -<p>“Poor old Concha!” she said, “I’m sorry it should -be like this for you.”</p> - -<p>Concha—puffed up with the sense of being a symbol -of a whole generation—scowled angrily: “Oh, it’s all -too fantastic! Thank the Lord I’ll soon be out of all -this!”</p> - -<p>At times there was something both dour and ungracious -about Concha—a complete identification of -herself with the unbecoming rôles she chose to act.</p> - -<p>Teresa found herself wondering if, after all, she herself -had not more justification with regard to her than -recently she had come to fear.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</h2> - -</div> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p>By the middle of March, Concha’s engagement had -become an accepted fact: Dick and Rory’s uncle, -Colonel Dundas of Drumsheugh, had exchanged letters; -the marriage was fixed for the beginning of July; -wedding presents had already begun to drift in.</p> - -<p>Even the Doña began to be hypnotised by the -inevitable, and to find a little balm in the joys of the -trousseau.</p> - -<p>In Parker’s sewing-room little scenes like this would -take place: “No, Concha, I <i>won’t</i> allow you to have -them so low. You might as well be stark naked.”</p> - -<p>Then Parker would giggle, and Concha, after a good-natured -“Good Lord!” would say, “I tell you, Doña, -they’re always <i>worn</i> like that now.”</p> - -<p>“That makes <i>no</i> difference to me.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, <i>darling</i>! I believe you’d like me to borrow one -of Jollypot’s as a pattern—they’re flannel and up to her -ears, and the sleeves reach down to her nails.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Concha!” Parker would titter, both -shocked and amused; and the Doña, with a snort, would -exclaim, “That poor Jollypot! To think of her sleeping -in flannel! But there are many degrees between the -nightgowns of Jollypot and those of a <i>demi-mondaine</i>, -and you remember what Father Vaughan ...” and -then she would suddenly realise that the views on -<i>lingerie</i> of the Roman hierarchy no longer carried any -weight with Concha, and in a chilly voice she would -say, “Well, you and Parker had better settle it in your<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span> -own way; it has nothing to do with me ... <i>now</i>,” -and would sweep out of the room with a heavy heart.</p> - -<p>One evening Dick, who had been in London for the -day, said at dinner, “By the way I met Munroe in the -city. He caught flu in that beastly cold seminary, and -it turned into pneumonia. He looked very bad, poor -chap. He’s on sick leave at present, and I was wondering -...” and he looked timidly at the Doña: (Since -his escapade he had become a very poor-spirited -creature.) “I was wondering, Anna ... if you don’t -mind, of course, if we might ask him down for a few -days.”</p> - -<p>“Poor young man! Certainly,” said the Doña, with -unusual warmth; for, as a rule, she deplored her -husband’s unbridled hospitality.</p> - -<p>“I wonder ... a very odd thing ... he was getting -on extraordinarily well in business and everything.... -He was asking about you, Concha, and your engagement. -Yon saw a good deal of him, didn’t you? Have you been -breaking his heart and turning him monk?”</p> - -<p>Concha laughed; gratified, evidently, by the suggestion. -But the Doña said coldly, “Concha was probably -merely one of the many tests to which he was putting -his vocation—and, evidently, not a very sweet one.... -What are you all laughing at? Oh, I see! I’ve used -the wrong word—<i>Acid</i> test, if you like it better.”</p> - -<p>But, though she laughed, Concha’s sensitive vanity -flooded her cheeks.</p> - -<p>That same night Dick wrote off to David Munroe telling -him to come down at once and spend his convalescence -at Plasencia.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span></p> - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>David Munroe arrived two days later. The Doña -welcomed him very warmly, and then, having got him -some illustrated papers, left him alone in the drawing-room, -and hurried back to the sewing-room, where she -was busy with Parker over the trousseau.</p> - -<p>Teresa, coming in to look for a book about a quarter -of an hour later, was surprised to find him already -arrived, as she had not heard the car. In a flash she -took in the badly cut semi-clerical black suit hanging -on his strong well-knit body, and noticed how hollow-eyed -and pale he had become.</p> - -<p>She greeted him kindly, coolly; slightly embarrassed -by the intentness of his gaze.</p> - -<p>“We are so glad you were able to come. It’s so -horrible to be ill in an institution. But you ought to -get well soon now, the weather’s so heavenly, and you’ll -soon be able to lie out in the garden,” she said, and began -to look for her book.</p> - -<p>He watched her in silence for a few seconds, and then -said, “Miss Lane, when I was here last, I gave you to -understand that I was the heir to Munroe of Auchenballoch.... -I’ll admit it was said as a sort of a joke -when I was angry, but it was a lie for all that. I come -of quite plain people.”</p> - -<p>Clearly, he was “making his soul” against ordination. -She tried to feel irritated, and say in a cold and slightly -surprised voice, “Really? I’m afraid I don’t remember -... er ...” but what she actually said was: “It -doesn’t matter a bit; it was obviously, as you say, just -a joke ... at least ... er ... well, at any rate, -I haven’t the slightest idea what <i>our</i> great-grandfather -was—quite likely a fishmonger; at any rate, I’m sure -he was far from aristocratic.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span></p> - -<p>David gave a sort of grunt and began restlessly to pace -up and down; this fidgeted Teresa: “Do sit down, -Mr. Munroe,” she said, “you must be so tired. I can’t -think where my sister is—she’ll come down soon, I -expect,” and added to herself, “I really don’t see -why I should have to entertain Concha’s discarded -suitors.”</p> - -<p>He sank slowly into an arm-chair. “Miss Lane,” he -said, “is it true that your sister is leaving the Catholic -fold?”</p> - -<p>“I believe so,” she answered; and there was a note -of dryness in her voice.</p> - -<p>There was a pause; David leaning forward and staring -at the Persian rug at his feet with knitted brows, as if -it were a document in a strange and difficult script.</p> - -<p>Suddenly he looked up and said; “Why is she doing -that?”</p> - -<p>“That you must ask <i>her</i>,” she answered coldly.</p> - -<p>“I heard ... that ... that it was because Captain -Dundas’s uncle wouldn’t leave him Drumsheugh, if he -married a Catholic, but ... that wouldn’t be true, -would it?”</p> - -<p>“What? That Colonel Dundas has a prejudice -against Catholics?”</p> - -<p>“No, that that’s the reason she’s leaving the Church?”</p> - -<p>She gave a little shrug: “Well, I suppose Paris -makes up for a mass.”</p> - -<p>For a few seconds he looked puzzled, and then said, -“Oh yes, that was Henry IV. of France—only the other -way round.... That was a curious case of Grace -working through queer channels—a man finding the -Church and salvation through worldliness and treachery -to his friends. But I shouldn’t wonder if what I was -saying wasn’t heresy—I’m not very learned in the -Fathers yet.”</p> - -<p>He paused; and then, fixing her with his eyes, said—“Did<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span> -it shock <i>you</i> very much—her being perverted for -such a reason?”</p> - -<p>“Really, Mr. Munroe,” she said coldly, “my feelings -about the matter are nobody’s concern, I....”</p> - -<p>“I beg your pardon,” he said gruffly, and blushed to -the roots of his hair.</p> - -<p>“Oh these touchy Scots!” she thought impatiently.</p> - -<p>There was an awkward silence for some seconds, and -she decided the only way to “save his face” was to -ask <i>him</i> a personal question, and give him the chance of -snubbing her in his turn; so she said, “We had no idea -when you stayed with us last autumn that you were -thinking of being ordained ... but perhaps you -weren’t thinking of it then?”</p> - -<p>He did not answer at once, but seemed to be meditating: -“It’s never quite a matter of <i>thinking</i>,” he said -finally, “it’s just a drifting ... drawn on and on by -the perfumes of the Church. What is it the Vulgate says -again? <i>In odore unguentorum tuorum curremus</i> ...” -he broke off, and then after a few seconds, as if summing -up, slightly humorously, the situation, he added ruminatively, -the monosyllable “úhu!” And the queer -Scots ejaculation seemed to give a friendly, homely turn -to his statement.</p> - -<p>“You were lucky being born in the Church,” he went -on; “my father was an Established Church minister up -in Inverness-shire, and I was taught to look upon the -Church as the Scarlet Woman. I remember once at -the Laird’s I ... well, I came near to bringing up -my tea because Lady Stewart happened to say that -her cook was a Catholic. And sometimes still,” and -he lowered his voice and looked at her with half -frightened eyes, “sometimes still I feel a wee bit -sick at mass.”</p> - -<p>It was indeed strange that he too should feel the -<i>ambivalence</i> of the Holy Mother.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span></p> - -<p>“I know what you mean,” she said; “I never exactly -feel sick—but I know what you mean.”</p> - -<p>“Do you?” he cried eagerly, “and you brought up -in it too!”</p> - -<p>He got up, took a few restless paces up and down the -room, and then stood still before a sketch in water-colours -of Seville Cathedral, staring at it with unseeing -eyes. Suddenly, he seemed to relax, and he returned -to his chair.</p> - -<p>“Well,” he said, “when one comes to think of it, you -know, it would be hard to find a greater sin than ... -feeling like that at mass.” Then a slow smile crept over -his face: “I remember my father telling me that his -father met a wee lad somewhere in the Highlands, and -asked him what he’d had to his breakfast, and he said, -“brose,”—and then what he’d had to his dinner, and -he said “brose,” and then what he’d had to his tea, -and it was brose again; so my grandfather said, “D’you -not get tired of nothing but brose?” and the wee lad -turned on him, quite indignant, and said, “Wud ye hae -me weary o’ ma meat?” ... It’s not just exactly the -same, I’ll admit—but it was a fine spirit the wee lad -showed.”</p> - -<p>A little wind blew in through one of the open windows, -very balmy, fresh from its initiation into the secret of -its clan,—a secret not unlike that of the Venetian -glass-blowers, and whispered from wind to wind -down the ages—the secret of blowing the earth into the -colours and shapes of violets and daffodils. It made the -summer cretonne curtains creak and the Hispano-Mauresque -plates knock against the wall on which they -were fastened and give out tiny ghostly chimes; as -did also the pendent balls on the Venetian glass. Teresa -suddenly thought of the late Pope listening to the -chimes of St. Mark’s on a gramophone. All at once -she became very conscious of the furniture—it was a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span> -whiff of that strange experience she had had in her -Chelsea lodgings. Far away in the view a cock crowed. -She suddenly wondered if the piano-tuner were coming -that morning.</p> - -<p>“The Presbyterians, you know,” he was saying, -“they’re not like the Episcopalians; they feel things -more ... well, more concretely ... for instance, they -picture themselves taking their Sabbath walk some day -down the golden streets ... they seem to ... well, -it’s different.” He paused, and then went on, “My -people were very poor, you know; it was just a wee -parish and a very poor one, and it was just as much as -my mother could do to make both ends meet. But one -day she came into my father’s study—I remember, he -was giving me my Latin lesson—and in her hand she -held one of these savings boxes for deep-sea fishermen, -and she said, “Donald”—that was my father’s name—“Donald, -every cleric should go to the Holy Land; -there’s a hundred pound in here I’ve saved out of the -house-keeping money, so away with you as soon as you -can get off.” How she’d managed it goodness only -knows, and she’d never let <i>us</i> feel the pinch anywhere. -You’d not find an Episcopal minister’s wife doing that!” -and he looked at her defiantly.</p> - -<p>“No; perhaps not ... that was very fine. Did -your father like the Holy Land when he got there?”</p> - -<p>There was something at once pathetic and grotesque -in the sudden vision she had of the Presbyterian -pilgrim, with a baggy umbrella for staff, and a -voluminous and shabby portmanteau for script, -meticulously placing his elastic-sided boots in his -Master’s footprints.</p> - -<p>“Oh yes, he liked it—he said it was a fine mountainous -country with a rare light atmosphere—though Jerusalem -was not as ‘golden’ as he had been led to understand! -and he met some Russian pilgrims there, and he would<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span> -often talk of their wonderful child-like faith ... but -I think he thought it a pity, all the same, that Our Lord -wasn’t born in Scotland,” and he smiled.</p> - -<p>Her fancy played for a few seconds round the life, -the mind, of that dead minister:</p> - -<p>“... But to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared -within the pages of the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected -tomes, the sacred name of <span class="allsmcap">JEHOVAH</span> in Hebrew capitals: -pressed down by the weight of the style, worn to the -last fading thinness of the understanding, there were -glimpses, glimmering notions of the patriarchal wanderings, -with palm trees hovering in the horizon, and -processions of camels at the distance of three thousand -years; there was Moses with the Burning Bush, the -number of the Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses -on the law and the prophets ... the great lapses of -time, the strange mutations of the globe were unfolded -with the voluminous leaf, as it turned over; and -though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic -veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet it was -a slumber ill exchanged for all the sharpened realities -of sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father’s life was -comparatively a dream; but it was a dream of infinity -and eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a -judgment to come!”</p> - -<p>It was not that this passage word for word stalked -through her head; it was just a sudden whiff of memory -of this passage. And on its wings it wafted the perfume -of all the melancholy eloquence of Hazlitt—the smell, -the vision, of noble autumn woods between Salisbury -and Andover. If ever a man had not walked dry-shod -that man was Hazlitt; all his life he had waded up to -the waist in Time and Change and Birth and Death, -and they had been to him what he held green, blue, -red, and yellow to have been to Titian: “the pabulum -to his sense, the precious darlings of his eye,” which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span> -“sunk into his mind, and nourished and enriched it -with the sense of beauty,” so that his pages glow with -green, blue, red, and yellow.</p> - -<p>Time, Change, Birth, Death—she, too, was floating -on their multi-coloured waters.</p> - -<p>“Do you think your father is in hell?” she asked -suddenly.</p> - -<p>He winced.</p> - -<p>“I don’t think so,” he answered, after a pause: “It -isn’t as if he’d seen the light and turned away from it. -I think he’ll be in Purgatory,” and he looked at her -questioningly.</p> - -<p>She was touched—this young seminarist was still -quite free from the dogmatism and harshness of the -priest.</p> - -<p>“You know the legend, don’t you,” she said gently, -“that the prayers of St. Gregory the Great got the soul -of the Emperor Trajan into Paradise?”</p> - -<p>“Is that so?” he cried eagerly.</p> - -<p>“Yes; he was the just pagan <i>par excellence</i>, and the -prayers of St. Gregory saved his soul.”</p> - -<p>The door opened and Parker came in: “Excuse me, -miss, but have you seen Miss Concha? It’s about that -old lace ... Madame wishes to see if it can be draped -without being cut.”</p> - -<p>“No, Parker, I have not seen her.”</p> - -<p>And Parker withdrew.</p> - -<p>“I thought about that ... I mean my parents’ -souls,” he went on, “when I first felt a vocation. I -thought, maybe, me being a priest might help them—not -that they weren’t a hundred times better than me—it’s -all very mysterious ...” he paused, and once -again punctuated his sentence with the ruminative -“úhu.”</p> - -<p>“My mother is terribly unhappy because my eldest -sister died an atheist ... and now Concha’s having<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span> -ratted ...” she found herself saying; herself surprised -at this abandoning of her wonted reserve.</p> - -<p>“Poor lady!” he said very sympathetically; “yes, -it’s a bad business for a mother ... my aunt Jeannie, -she was an elderly lady, a good bit older than my mother. -I lived with her in Inverness when I was going to the -Academy. Well, my mother told me she had several -good offers when she was young, but she would never -marry, because she felt she just couldn’t face the responsibility -of maybe bringing a damned soul into the world -... yes, the Scotch think an awful lot about the ‘last -things.’ ... And I suppose your mother can’t do anything -to stop her?”</p> - -<p>“Have you ever heard of a mother being able to stop -a child going its own way?”</p> - -<p>“Maybe not,” and he smiled: “I should think <i>you</i> -must have been most awfully wilful when you were wee,” -and he looked at her quizzically.</p> - -<p>The moment when the conversation between a man -and a woman changes from the general to the personal -is always a pungent one; Teresa gave him a cool smile -and said, “How do you know?”</p> - -<p>“Well, weren’t you?”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps ... in a very quiet way.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, that’s always the worst.”</p> - -<p>Then, almost as if it were a tedious duty, he harked -back to Concha’s perversion: “Yes, it’s a bad business -for you all about Miss Concha.”</p> - -<p>“Life absorbs everything—in time,” said Teresa, half -to herself.</p> - -<p>“What do you mean exactly by that, Miss Lane?”</p> - -<p>“Heresy, probably,” and she smiled.</p> - -<p>“Well, what do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“It’s difficult to explain ... but I feel a sort of -transubstantiation always going on ... sin and mistakes -and sorrows and joy slowly, inevitably, turned<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span> -into the bread that is life, and it’s no use worrying and -struggling and trying to prevent everything but fine -flour from going in ... all’s grist that comes to the -mill.”</p> - -<p>He looked at her intently for a few seconds: “Don’t -you believe in the teaching of the Church, Miss Lane?”</p> - -<p>“Does it ... does it matter about believing?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, it matters.”</p> - -<p>“Well ... I haven’t quite made up my mind.”</p> - -<p>Suddenly from the garden came Concha’s voice -singing:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I’m so <i>jolly</i> glad to meet you!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I’m so <i>jolly</i> glad you’re glad!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Then one of the French-windows burst open, and in she -came, all blown by March winds, a bunch of early -daffodils in her hand, and, behind her, ’Snice, his paws -caked with mud.</p> - -<p>She made Teresa think of the exquisite conceit in -which Herrick describes a wind-blown maiden:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">She lookt as she’d been got with child</div> - <div class="verse indent6">By young Favonius.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“Hallo! When did you arrive? It was such a -divine morning I had to go for a walk. You poor -creature—you do look thin. Oh dear, I <i>must</i> have a -cigarette.”</p> - -<p>Her unnecessary heartiness probably concealed a -little embarrassment; as to him—he was perfectly -calm, grave, and friendly.</p> - -<p>Then Dick came in: “Hallo! How are you, Munroe? -So sorry I wasn’t about when you arrived—had to go -down to the village to see the parson. We’ll have to -fatten you up while you’re here—shan’t we, Concha?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span> -I don’t know whether we can rise to <i>haggis</i>, but we’ll do -our best.”</p> - -<p>Teresa felt a strange sensation of relief; here it was -back again—old, foolish, meaningless, Merry England. -She realised that, during the last half hour, she had -been in another world—it was not exactly life; and -she remembered that sense of almost frightening -incongruity when she had first heard of David’s -vocation.</p> - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>Soon it was real spring: the trees became covered -with golden buds, with pale green tassels; the orchard -was a mass of white blossom; the view became streaked -with the startling greenness of young wheat; and the -long grass of the wild acre beyond the orchard was -penetrated with jonquils, and daffodils, and narcissi, -boldly pouting their corollas at birds and insects and -men. While very soon every one grew so accustomed -to the singing of the birds that one almost ceased to -<i>hear</i> it—it had entered the domain of vision, and become -a stippled background to the <i>velatura</i> of trees and -leaves and flowers.</p> - -<p>David had settled down very happily at Plasencia, and -had proved himself to be a highly domesticated creature—always -ready to do odd jobs about the house or -garden.</p> - -<p>Shortly after his arrival Concha had gone up to -Scotland to stay with Colonel Dundas, so it fell upon -Teresa to entertain him.</p> - -<p>They would go for long walks; and though they talked -all the time, never, after that first conversation, did they -touch on religious matters.</p> - -<p>Sometimes he would tell her of his childhood in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span> -Scotland, and it soon became almost a part of her own -memories: the small, dark, sturdy creature in a shabby -kilt, a “poke of sweeties” in his sporran, at play with -his brothers and sisters, dropping, say, a worm-baited -bootlace into the liquid amber of the burn—their chaff, -as befitted children of the Manse, with a biblical flavour, -“Now then David, my man, no so much lip—<i>Selah, change -the tune</i>, d’ye hear?” And the hillsides tesselated with -heather and broom, and the sheep ruddled red as deer, -and the beacon of the rowans flashed from hill to hill; -while down the bland and portly Spey floated little -dreams, like toy boats, making for big towns, and the -sea, and over the sea.... Then all would melt into -the tune of the “Old Hundred”:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Awl peeeople thaat own errrth dew dwell.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">What time James Grant, the precentor with the trombone-voice, -rocked his Bible up and down, as though it -were a baby whose slumbers he was soothing with an -ogre lullaby.</p> - -<p>All this was a far cry from his Holiness, the Immaculate -Conception, the Sacred Heart of Jesus ... and -yet ... it was not quite Plasencia; there was something -different about it all: again she remembered the -incongruity of the minarets of the Sacré-Cœur.</p> - -<p>Sometimes, too, he would tell her of his years in South -Africa—for instance, how, after a long day of riding up -and down the fields of sugar-cane, he would lie out on -the veranda of his little bungalow and read Dumas’s -novels, while the plangent songs of the indentured -Indians, celebrating some feast with a communal curry, -would float up from their barracks under the hill; or -else the night would shiver to the uncanny cry of a -bush-baby: “It’s a wee beastie that wails at night. -There’s no other sound like it in the world—beside it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span> -the owl’s and the nightjar’s cries are homely and barn-door -like.”</p> - -<p>“It must have been the sort of noise one would hear -if one slept in Cathy’s old room at Wuthering Heights,” -she said, half to herself.</p> - -<p>“You’re right there,” he answered, “I never thought -of it, but you’re quite right,” and then he added, “it’s -a grand book, that.” And, after another pause: “Do -you realise that one never knows whether Cathy and -Heathcliff were sinners?”</p> - -<p>“How do you mean? I must say they both struck -me as very wild and violent characters!”</p> - -<p>“No, no, I mean <i>sinners</i>. One never knows ... -whether they broke the Seventh Commandment or not,” -and suddenly he blushed violently.</p> - -<p class="tb">After tea he would take her drives in the car; it was -very peaceful rushing past squat churches with faintly -dog-toothed Norman towers, past ruined windmills, -and pollard willows, and the delicate diversity of spring -woods. Guy had once said that a motor drive in the -evening through the Eastern Counties was like Gray’s -<i>Elegy</i> cut up by a jig-saw.</p> - -<p>Sometimes, as they sped along, he would sing—songs -he had learned at the front. There was one that the -Canadians had taught him, with the chorus:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Be sure and check your chewing gum</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With the darkie at the door,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And you’ll hear some Bible stories</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That you never heard before.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">There was the French waltz-song, <i>Sous les Ponts de -Paris</i>, of which he only knew a few words here and -there, and these he pronounced abominably; but its -romantic wistful tune suited his voice. Sometimes,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span> -too, he would sing Zulu songs that reminded Teresa of -Spanish <i>coplas</i> sung by Seville gipsies; and sometimes -the Scottish psalms and paraphrases in metre; and -their crude versification and rugged melodious airs -struck her, accustomed to the intoning of the Latin -Psalter, as almost ridiculous. They had lost all of -what Sir Philip Sidney calls, “the psalmist’s notable -prosopopœias when he maketh you, as it were, see God -coming in His majesty”; and they made one see, -instead, a very homely God, who, in the cool of the -evening, would stroll into the crofter’s cottage, as -though it had been the tent of Abraham, and praise the -guidwife’s scones, and resolve the crofter’s theological -difficulties.</p> - -<p>All this showed a robustness of conscience—he had -none of the doctrinairism and queasiness of the ordinary -convert; what mattered it to him that the songs he -sang were often <i>very</i> secular, the version of the Psalms -heavy with Presbyterianism?</p> - -<p>But she was often conscious of the decades that lay -between them, the leagues and leagues, of which the -milestones were little cultured jokes at Chelsea tea-parties, -and Cambridge epigrams, and endless novels -and plays. The very language he spoke was twenty -or thirty years behind her own; such expressions as -“a very refined lady,” or “a regular earthly Paradise,” -fell from his lips with all their pristine dignity. And -yet she could talk to him simply and spontaneously as -to no one else.</p> - -<p>Since he had been there she had left off reading -mediæval books, and her brain felt like a deserted hive.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span></p> - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>Easter was very late that year, and the Catholics at -Plasencia were wakened very early on Easter morning -to an exquisite, soft, scented day, almost like summer.</p> - -<p>Teresa, looking out of her window as she dressed, saw -that her parents were already walking in the garden. -She gazed for some seconds at her father’s sturdy back, -as he stood, as if rooted to the earth, gazing at some -minute flower in the border.</p> - -<p>St. Joseph of Arimathea, she thought, may have been -just such a kindly self-indulgent person as he; dearly -loving his garden. And if her father had been asked to -allow the corpse of a young dissenter to lie in <i>his</i> garden, -though he might have grumbled, he would have been -far too good-natured to refuse. And, if that young -dissenter had turned out to be God Almighty, her father -would have turned into a Saint, and after his death his -sturdy bones would have worked miracles. She smiled -as she pictured the Doña’s indignant surprise at finding -her husband chosen for canonisation—the College of -Cardinals would have had no difficulty in obtaining an -<i>advocatus diaboli</i>.</p> - -<p>And as to the garden—surely the contact of Christ’s -body would have fertilised it, a thousand times more -than Lorenzo’s head the pot of basil, making it riot into -a forest of fantastic symbolic blossoms: great racemes, -perhaps, which, with their orange-pollened pistils protruding -like flames from their seven long, white, waxy -blossoms, would recall the seven-branched candlestick -in the Temple; bell-flowers shaped like chalices and -stained crimson inside as if with blood; monstrous -veronicas, each blossom bearing the impress of the Holy -Face.</p> - -<p>What an unutterably ridiculous faith it was! But,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span> -for good or ill, her own imagination was steeped all -through with the unfading dye of its traditions.</p> - -<p>Then she went downstairs, and David drove them -through the fresh morning to mass.</p> - -<p>The nearest Catholic church was in a small market-town -some ten miles distant. It was always a pleasure -to Teresa to drive through that town—it had the completeness -and finish of a small, beautifully made object -that one could turn round and round in one’s hands -and examine from every side. The cobbled market-place, -where on Saturdays cheap-jacks turned somersaults -and cracked jokes in praise of their wares, exactly -as they had done in the days of Shakespeare and Ben -Jonson; the flat Georgian houses of red brick picked -out in white and grown over with ivy, in one of which -the doctor’s daughters knitted jumpers and talked -about the plays they had seen on their last visit to -London—“a very weepie piece; playing on nothing -but the black notes, don’t you know!” the heraldic -lion on the sign of the old inn; the huge yellow poster -advertising Colman’s Mustard—it was all absorbed into -a small harmonious whole, an English story. All, that -is to say, except the large Catholic church built in the -hideous imitation Gothic of the last century, <i>that</i> -remained ever outside of it all, a great unsightly excrescence, -spoiling the harmony. It had been built with -money left for the purpose by a pious lady, who had -begun her career as a Belgian actress, and ended it as -the widow of a rich manufacturer of dolls’ eyes, who -had bought a big property in the neighbourhood.</p> - -<p>“I used to think when I was a child,” said Teresa, -who was sitting in front beside David, “that the relics -under the altar were small wax skulls and glass eyes.”</p> - -<p>He turned and looked at her with an indulgent -smile.</p> - -<p>“I believe he looks upon me as a little girl,” she said<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span> -to herself; and she felt at once annoyed and strangely -glad.</p> - -<p>Then they went into the dank, dark, candle-lit church; -and it was indeed as if they had suddenly stepped on to -a different planet.</p> - -<p>A few minutes of waiting—and then mass had -begun.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>Resurrexi, et adhuc tecum sum, alleluia; posuisti -super me manum tuam, alleluia: mirabilis facta est -scientia tua, alleluia, alleluia.</p> - -</div> - -<p>She sat beside David, dreamily telling her beads, and -glancing from time to time at her Missal.</p> - -<p>With signings, and genuflexions, and symbolic -kisses, the chorus in their sexless vestments sang the -amœbæan pre-Thespian drama—verses strung together -from David and Isaiah that hinted at a plot, but did -not even <i>tell</i> a story ... till suddenly in the <i>Sequentia</i> -an actor broke loose from the chorus, and tragedy was -born:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>Victimæ Paschali laudes immolent Christiani. Agnus -redemit oves: Christus innocens Patri reconciliavit -peccatores. Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando: -dux vitæ; mortuus regnat vivus.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Die nobis, Maria</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quid vidisti in via?</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Sepulcrum Christi viventis</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et gloriam vidi resurgentis</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Angelicos testes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sudarium et vestes.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Surrexit Christus spes mea:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Præcedet vos in Galilæam.</div><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Scimus Christum surrexisse a mortuis vere:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tu nobis, victor Rex, miserere.</div> - <div class="verse indent18">Amen. Alleluia.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<p>Suddenly an idea came to her that this too was a play, -in the particular sense that she wished her own reactions -to be a play, that is to say a squeezing into a plot of the -manifold manifestations of Life; and, if one chose to -play on words, a plot <i>against</i> Life, as well: pruning, -pruning, discarding, shaping, till the myriad dreams -and aspirations of man, the ceaseless struggle, through -chemists’ retorts, through the earth of gardens, through -the human brain, of the Unknown to become the Known -was reduced to an imaginary character called God; a -nailing of the myriad ways by which man can become -happy and free to a wooden cross a few cubits high; a -reducing of his myriad forms of spiritual sustenance to -a tiny wafer of flour; a tampering, too, with the past, -saying “in the beginning <i>was</i> ...” but Life, noisy, -tangible, resilient, supple, cunning Life, was laughing out -there in the streets and fields at the makers of myths; -for it knew that every plot against it was foredoomed -to failure.</p> - -<p>Then they went up to the altar; and, kneeling between -the Doña and David, she received the host on her tongue.</p> - -<p>The Holy Mother—Celestina, the old wise courtesan -of Spain, skilled beyond all others in the distilling of -perfumes, in the singing of spells—she was luring her -back, she was luring her back ... in odore unguentorum -tuorum curremus ... what cared Celestina that -it was by the senses and the imagination that she held -her victims instead of by the reason?</p> - -<p>The Rock ... Peter’s Rock ... a Prometheus -bound to it for ever, though the vulture should eat out -her heart.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span></p> - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>On the drive home Jollypot, who was sitting behind -beside the Doña, remarked meditatively, “How -lovely the Easter <i>Sequentia</i> is!... so sudden and -dramatic!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes,” said the Doña, who never failed to be -irritated by Jollypot’s enthusiasm over the literary -aspect of the Liturgy. “Oh, look at these trees! -Everything is so very early.”</p> - -<p>“I was following in my Missal,” Jollypot went on, -“and I was suddenly struck by the words: Agnus -redemit oves—the lamb redeems the sheep—they seemed -to me <i>so</i> lovely: and I wondered ... I wondered if -it weren’t always so ... the lamb redeeming the sheep, -I mean ... ‘and a little child shall lead them,’ -if ...” and she lowered her voice, “if little Jasper -with his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament should redeem -... dear Pepa’s lamb ... do you think?...”</p> - -<p>“What <i>do</i> you mean, Jollypot?” said the Doña -severely.</p> - -<p>“Well, I was wondering, dear Mrs. Lane ... if -his wonderful child piety ...; if it ... if it mightn’t -help dear Pepa.”</p> - -<p>The Doña gave a snort: “The words in the <i>Sequentia</i>, -Jollypot, refer to Christ and the Church—what <i>could</i> -they have to do with Jasper and Pepa?” and she gave -an involuntary sigh.</p> - -<p>“What do you think of our seminarist?” she asked -after a pause, in a low voice.</p> - -<p>Jollypot, though she had lived with the Doña for -years, had not yet learned to know when her voice was -ironical:</p> - -<p>“Oh, I think he’s a <i>dear</i> fellow,” she said enthusiastically, -“so <i>big</i> and <i>simple</i>, and <i>child-like</i> and <i>rugged</i>, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span> -such a jolly voice! And sometimes, too, he’s so -<i>pawky</i>—oh, I think he’s a <i>delightful</i> fellow.”</p> - -<p>The Doña gave a tiny shrug: “He seems to like -staying with us very much,” she said drily.</p> - -<p>“But how could he help it? You are all so jolly to -him.”</p> - -<p>“Yes; some of us are very hospitable,” and the -Doña’s eyes rested for a moment on Teresa’s back; -“still, one would have thought he might have recovered -from his influenza by now.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</h2> - -</div> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p>Anna and Jasper came to Plasencia for their Easter -holidays, and towards the end of April Concha and -Rory got back from Scotland. It was the first time -Teresa had seen them together since their engagement, -and their relationship was so comfortable and intimate -that, to her, it almost smacked of incest.</p> - -<p>As to the Doña, the presence of Rory in the flesh -seemed to undo all the reconciliatory work of the past -two months, and her attitude once more became uncompromising, -her heart bitter and heavy.</p> - -<p>Harry and Arnold came down for the last “week-end” -in April; so they were now quite a big party -again, and Teresa did not see so much of David.</p> - -<p>It was dear that Concha was bursting with the -glories of Drumsheugh; but she had no one to tell them -to; the Doña and Teresa were out of the question, and -Arnold had sulked with her ever since her engagement. -However, one afternoon when they were sitting in the -loggia, she could keep it in no longer: “I simply <i>love</i> -Drumsheugh,” she began; Arnold immediately started -talking to Harry, but to her surprise she found Teresa -clearly prepared to listen sympathetically. “It isn’t -a ‘stately home of England’ sort of thing, you know, -but square and plain and solid, and full of solid Victorian -furniture; and the portraits aren’t ruffles and armour -and that sort of thing, but eighteenth-century-judges-sort-of-people. -There’s a perfectly divine Raeburn of -Rory’s great-great-grandmother playing ring-o’-roses<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span> -with her children. It’s altogether <i>very</i> eighteenth -century ... the sort of house one can imagine Dr. -Johnson staying in, when he was in Scotland, and very -much enjoying the claret and library. And there’s no -‘culture’ about it—it’s filled with cases of stuffed birds, -and stuffed foxes and things....”</p> - -<p>“<i>What</i>, Concha?” cried Arnold, breaking off in the -middle of his sentence to Harry, “did you say <i>stuffed -foxes</i>? I never thought much of the Scotch, but I -didn’t think they were as bad as that. Do you really -shoot foxes in Scotland, Dundas?”</p> - -<p>Since the engagement he had gone back to calling -Rory, “Dundas.”</p> - -<p>Rory was speechless with laughter: “Oh, Concha! -What <i>are</i> you talking about?” he spluttered, and poor -Concha, who, since her engagement, had gone in for -being a sporting character, blushed crimson.</p> - -<p>For the first time Teresa saw something both pretty -and touching in Concha’s attitude to life: as a little -girl-guide, an Anna, in fact, passionately collects, -badges for efficiency in heterogeneous activities—sewing, -playing <i>God Save the King</i> on the piano, gardening, -tennis, reciting Kipling’s <i>If</i>; so Concha collected the -various manifestations of “grown-up-ness”—naughty -stories, technical and sporting expressions, scandal -about well-known people; and it was all, really, so -innocent.</p> - -<p>“You got on very well with Colonel Dundas, didn’t -you?” she said, turning the subject to what she knew -was a source of gratification.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, she scored heavily with Uncle Jimmy,” -said Rory proudly. “He’s in love with her—<i>really</i> in -love with her. But I don’t know whether that’s much -of a triumph—he’s the bore of ten clubs.”</p> - -<p>Concha began to count on her fingers: “The Senior, -the Travellers’, Hurlingham, ... er....”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span></p> - -<p>“The Conservative Club, Edinburgh,” prompted -Rory.</p> - -<p>“The Conservative, Edinburgh—what’s the St. -Andrews one?”</p> - -<p>“<span class="smcap">Royal</span> and <span class="smcap">Ancient</span>, you goose!” he roared.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, of course, Royal and Ancient. Then the -North Berwick one—that’s six. Then there’s....”</p> - -<p>At that moment the Doña arrived for tea, cutting -them off for the time from this grotesque source of -pride; as in her presence there could be no talk of -Drumsheugh and “Uncle Jimmy.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, the garden <i>is</i> forging ahead. What I like is -roses; do you think this will be a good year for them? -But I do like them to have a smell.”</p> - -<p>“Guy says that Shakespeare is wrong and that there -<i>is</i> something in a name, and that the reason they don’t -smell so sweet now is that they’re called by absurd -names like ‘Hugh Dickson’ and ‘Frau Karl Druschke.’”</p> - -<p>“Well, how does he explain that Frau Karl has been -called ‘Snow Queen’ since the War and still hasn’t any -smell?”</p> - -<p>“By the way, where <i>is</i> Guy? We haven’t seen him -since the dance at Christmas. Do you remember how -queer he was the next morning?”</p> - -<p>“He’s been in Spain, but he should be back soon,” -said Arnold, with a resentful look at Teresa.</p> - -<p>Then Anna and Jasper trotted across the lawn and -on to the loggia, both very grubby; Jasper carrying a -watering-can.</p> - -<p>“We’ve been gardening,” said Anna proudly.</p> - -<p>“That ... er ... is a ... er ... self-evident -proposition that needs no demonstration, as the dogs’-meat -man said to the cook when she ... er ... told -him he wasn’t a gentleman,” quoted Harry.</p> - -<p>“Darlings, isn’t it time for your own tea? And -what <i>would</i> Nanny say? You really oughtn’t to come<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span> -to grown-up tea without washing your hands,” protested -Teresa—in vain; for the Doña had already provided -each of them with a large slice of cake.</p> - -<p>Then Jasper’s roving eye perched upon David, -meditatively stirring his tea. He began to snigger: -“Silly billy! <i>You</i> can’t make flowers grow. Anna -says so.”</p> - -<p>“Jasper! Don’t be so silly,” said Anna, reddening.</p> - -<p>“But you <i>said</i> so,” whined Jasper.</p> - -<p>“What’s this? What’s it all about?” laughed -Rory.</p> - -<p>“Nothing,” said Anna sulkily.</p> - -<p>“Now then; out with it, old thing!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, darling, why should Mr. Munroe make flowers -grow?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, well,” and Anna blushed again, “You see, it was -about holy water. I thought if it was <i>really</i> like that -Mr. Munroe might bless the water in our watering-can, -so that they’d all grow up in the night ... just to show -whether it was true or not, you know.”</p> - -<p>Harry looked round with an unmistakable expression -of paternal pride; Dick, Arnold, Concha and Rory -exploded into their several handkerchiefs; Jollypot -murmured, “Dear little girl!” The Doña looked -sphinx-like; and Teresa glanced nervously at David.</p> - -<p>“I’m awfully sorry, Anna, but I fear I can’t do that -for you—for one thing, I’m not yet a priest,” he answered, -blushing crimson.</p> - -<p>“By the way, Mr. Munroe, when <i>are</i> you going to be -ordained?” asked the Doña suavely. “Let me see ... -it <i>could</i> be in September, Our Lady’s birth month, -couldn’t it? I read an article by a Jesuit Father the -other day about the ‘Save the Vocations Fund,’ and -he said there was no birthday gift so acceptable to -Our Lady as the first mass of a young priest.”</p> - -<p>The Doña rarely if ever spoke upon matters of faith<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span> -in public; so Teresa felt that her words had a definite -purpose, and were spoken with concealed malice.</p> - -<p>“Good God!” muttered Harry; then, turning to -Arnold, he said—“it’s ... it’s ... <i>astounding</i>. Birthday -presents of young priests! It’s like the Mountain -Mother and her Kouretes!” He spoke in a very low -voice; but Teresa overheard.</p> - -<p>The smell of this half ridiculous, half sinister, little -incident soon evaporated from the atmosphere, and the -usual foolish, placid Plasencia talk gurgled happily on:</p> - -<p>“Well, if this weather goes on we ought soon to be -getting the tennis-court marked ... oh Lord! I wish -it was easier to get exercise in this place.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m sure Anna and Jasper would be only too -delighted to race you round the lawn.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, by the way, didn’t you say there was a <i>real</i> -tennis court somewhere in this neighbourhood?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, but it belongs to a noble lord ... oh, by the -way, Dad, have you had that field rolled? If there’s -to be hay in it this year, it really ought to be, you -know.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, but a heifer’s far more valuable after she’s -calved, far better wait.”</p> - -<p>“Does Buckingham Palace make its own light or get -it from the town?”</p> - -<p>“From the town, I should think.”</p> - -<p>“What happens then if there’s a strike of the electric -light people?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, what a great thought! Worthy of Anna.”</p> - -<p>“It’s a curious thing that ... er ... a reference -to ... er ... <span class="smcap">liquid</span> in any form inevitably tickles -an undergraduate: if I ... er ... er ... happen -to remark in a lecture that ... er ... <span class="smcap">moisture</span> is -necessary to a plant, the room ... er ... <span class="smcap">rocks with -laughter for five minutes</span>!”</p> - -<p>And so on, and so on.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span></p> - -<p>But for Teresa, the shadow of that <i>other</i> plot had -fallen over the silver and china and tea-cups, over the -healthy English faces, over the tulips and wallflowers -in the garden; and over the quiet view, made by the -sowing and growing and reaping of the sunbrowned -rain-washed year; but it has a ghost—the other; -shadowy Liturgical Year, whose fields are altars in dim -churches and whose object, by means of inarticulate -chants and hierophantic gestures, is to blow some cold -life into a still-born Idea, then to let it die, then, by a -febrile reiteration of psalms and prophecies, to galvanise -it again into life.</p> - -<p>And David, sitting there a little apart, though he -could talk ably about business and economics and -agriculture—he was merely a character in the Plot. -He was like a ghost, but a ghost that dwarfed and -unsubstantialised the living. He was a true son of -that race—her race, too, through the “dark Iberians”—who, -carrying their secret in their hearts, were driven -by the Pagans into the fastnesses of the hills, the hills -whence, during silent centuries, they drew the strength -of young men’s dreams, the strength of old men’s -visions, and within whose cup quietly, unceasingly, they -plied their secret craft: turning bread into God. And -though in time St. Patrick (so says one of the legends), -betrayed the secret to Ireland, and St. Columba, his -descendant in Christ, to England, and they, the men -of the Scottish hills, lost all memory of it in harsh and -homely heresies, yet once it had been theirs—theirs only.</p> - -<p>Yes; but it was all nonsense—a myth, a plot. She -was becoming hag-ridden again; she must be careful.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span></p> - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>One afternoon in the beginning of May, when Teresa -came on to the loggia at tea-time, she found no one -there but David, sitting motionless. He looked at her -gravely, and said:</p> - -<p>“The doctor came this afternoon.”</p> - -<p>“Did he? What did he say?”</p> - -<p>“He said I was all right now.”</p> - -<p>“That’s splendid.”</p> - -<p>“So ... I must be getting back.”</p> - -<p>“When?”</p> - -<p>“Well, you see, I’ve no right to stay a minute longer -than I need. And so ... if it’s convenient ... well, -really, I should be going to-morrow.”</p> - -<p>“Should you?” And there was the minimum of -conventional regret in her voice, “I’ll tell Rendall to -pack for you.”</p> - -<p>“I can pack for myself ... thank you,” he said -gruffly.</p> - -<p>They were silent. His eyes absently swept over the -view, then the border, and then lingered for a few -seconds on the double row of ancient hawthorns, which, -before the days of Plasencia and its garden, had stood -on either side of a lane leading to a vanished village, -and then fastened on the gibbous moon, pressed, like -the petal of a white rose, against the blue sky, idly -enjoying, as it were from the wings, the fragrance and -tempered sunshine, while it waited for its cue to come -on and play for the millionth millionth time its rôle of -the amorous potent ghost.</p> - -<p>“You’ve all been very kind to me ... you, specially,” -he said.</p> - -<p>“Oh ... it’s been a pleasure,” she answered dully.</p> - -<p>“I’d like—if you could do with me—to come back<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span> -for a wee visit in the summer ... before I say -my first mass.” Then he added, with a little smile, -“but maybe your mother won’t want to have me.”</p> - -<p>“Oh ... I’m sure ... she’d be delighted,” she -said, with nervous little catch in her voice.</p> - -<p>He looked at her, squarely, sombrely: “No, she -wouldn’t be delighted ... but I’ll come all the same,” -and he gave a short laugh.</p> - -<p>“Are you ... you ... when are you going to be -ordained?”</p> - -<p>“It will be the beginning of October, I think,” and -again his eyes wandered absently over the view, the -border, the hedge of hawthorn; and her eyes followed -his.</p> - -<p>The Plot ... the Popish Plot.... “Please to -remember the fifth of November,” ... how many -times Guy Fawkes must have been burned in that -vanished village! On frosty nights when the lamp-light -and fire-light glowed through the cosy red curtains -of the inn parlour, and the boys wore red worsted -mufflers, and stamped to keep their feet warm, and held -their hands out to the flame of the bonfire. For they -had been wise English people who had lived a hundred -years ago in that vanished village; <i>they</i> had known -what it all came to: that there was Spring, Summer, -Autumn, Winter, then Spring again; that there was -good ale to be had at the Saracen’s Head, for the paying; -that Goody Green, who kept the shop, gave short -measure, but this did not cause her to be pinched by -elves, nor to come to a bad end; that the parson was -a kind man, though a wheezy one, and liked his glass -of ale, and that whatever he might say in his sermons, -the daffodil, at any rate, <i>died</i> on Easter Day; that very -few of the wives and mothers had gone to Church maids, -but they were none the worse for that, while Marjory -from the farm up by Hobbett’s Corner hadn’t gone to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span> -Church at all, because she had been seduced by a fine -young gentleman staying at the Saracen’s Head to -shoot wild duck, and that, in consequence, she had gone -away to London, where she had married a grocer’s -apprentice, who became in time an alderman, and drove -her about in a fine coach; that William Hobson ran -away to sea, and was never heard of again; that Stan -Huckle had emigrated to America, whence he wrote -that he had become a Methodist, because they had -strawberry festivals with lumps of frozen cream in their -chapel; in fact, that it was no use seeking for meanings -and morals, because there were none. And then, one -Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter, one took to one’s -bed, and after a time one’s toes grew cold, and the -room grew dark, and one heard a voice saying: “Paw -ole man! The end’s near now. Well, it’ll be a blessed -release—reely.” And that was all, except, before the -dim eyes closed, a memory ... or was it the sudden -scent of May? Once long ago, in that hawthorn lane, -beneath the moon, migratory dreams had seemed to -flock together from all quarters like homing birds, and -the Future had suddenly sprung up, and all the stars -snowed down on it, till it too was a hawthorn bush -covered with a million small white blossoms, in which, -next spring, the birds would build their nests.</p> - -<p>“I have noticed,” she said, “the Scotch have a great -sense of the ‘sinfulness of sin.’”</p> - -<p>“Yes ... I think that’s true,” he answered.</p> - -<p>“St. Paul invented sin, I suppose; Jesus didn’t.”</p> - -<p>“St. Paul invent sin! You know that’s not true—it’s -as old as apples,” and he smiled down on her with -that tender, indulgent smile that made her feel like a -little girl.</p> - -<p class="tb">At tea he told the Doña what the doctor had said:</p> - -<p>“And so I’ll not trespass any longer on your<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span> -hospitality, Mrs. Lane,” he added, with the laborious -gentility probably learnt from his aunt in Inverness.</p> - -<p>“Oh, well, it has been a great pleasure having you,” -said the Doña, with more geniality than she had shown -him for weeks, “I’m sure we shall all miss you—shan’t -we, Teresa?”</p> - -<p>“I’m sure we shall,” she answered, in a calm, cool -voice; no tinge of colour touching her pale cheeks, but -a sudden spark of hostility and triumph leaping into her -eyes as she met those of the Doña.</p> - -<p>“I should like to come and see you all again, before -I say my first mass,” he said, looking the Doña squarely -in the face.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes ... certainly ... but we generally go -away in the summer.”</p> - -<p>“I was thinking ... the end of September, -maybe?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, we’ll sure to be back by then,” cut in Dick, -always on the alert to take the edge off his wife’s -grudging invitations, “Yes, you come to us at the -end of September; though, for the sake of the children’s -garden, it’s a pity it couldn’t be <i>after</i> your -ordination!”</p> - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>The weather was so warm that after dinner they went -and sat out upon the lawn; but about half-past nine -the elders found it chilly and went indoors.</p> - -<p>“What about a walk?” said Concha, getting up.</p> - -<p>“Good scheme!” said Rory.</p> - -<p>“Are you coming, darling?” she asked Teresa, going -up to her and laying her soft cheek against hers.</p> - -<p>“No, Puncher, I don’t think so,” she said, smiling up -at her; and she was touched to see how she flushed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span> -with pleasure at the old, childish pet-name, grown, these -last years, so unfamiliar.</p> - -<p>So Teresa and David sat on together, watching Concha -and Rory glimmering down the border till they melted -into the invisible view.</p> - -<p>It was a glorious night. The lawns of the sky were -dusty with the may of stars. The moon, no longer -flower-like and idle, shone a cold masterpiece of metallurgy. -The air was laden with the perfumes of shrubs -and flowers. Teresa noticed that the perfumes did not -come simultaneously, but one after another; like -notes of a tune picked out with one finger—lilac, may, -wallflower....</p> - -<p>“I can smell sweetbriar!” cried David suddenly, a -strange note of triumph in his voice, “it’s like a Scotch -tune—‘Oh, my love is like a red red rose’!” and he -laughed, a little wildly.</p> - -<p>Teresa’s heart began to beat very fast, and seizing -at random upon the first words that occurred to her, -she said, “Concha’s like a red red rose,” and began -to repeat mechanically:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">“Red as a rose is she;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nodding their heads before her goes</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The merry minstrelsy.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“I wasn’t thinking of her ...” he said. “I -wasn’t ... Oh, my love is like the rose of Sharon and -the lily of the valley ... it’s all the same”; and then, -abruptly: “Look! There’s the moon. She’s always -the same—Scotland, Africa, in the trenches, here. She’s -like books—Homer and the rest—in whatever land you -open them, they just say the same thing that they did -a hundred years ago.”</p> - -<p>Far away a night-express flashed and shrieked -through the view; then an owl hooted.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span></p> - -<p>“So you are going back to-morrow,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Yes.... Hark! There’s the sweetbriar again,” -and he began to sing triumphantly:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“And I will come again, my Love,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>He turned and looked at her with strangely shining -eyes: “I hear you through the wall, getting up and -going to bed every night and every morning. It makes -me feel sick sometimes, like the smell of iodoform at -the front; that’s a nice way of putting it!” and again -he laughed wildly: “like the smell of sweetbriar! -like the smell of the mass! Good-night,” and he got -up hurriedly and strode towards the house. Then he -came back: “Get up and come in,” he said gently; -“it’s getting cold and damp,” and he pulled her up -with a cool, firm hand.</p> - -<p>They went in, lit their candles in the hall and said -good-night at their bedroom doors; quietly, distantly.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</h2> - -</div> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p>David left early next morning; a stiff, genteel -little letter of thanks came from him to the Doña, -and then, for most of them, he might never have -been.</p> - -<p>Each day life at Plasencia became more and more -focused on the approaching wedding; and the Doña -and Jollypot spent hours in the morning-room making -lists of guests and writing invitations.</p> - -<p>As soon as David had gone Teresa began to write—the -mediæval books had done their work and were no -longer needed.</p> - -<p>St. Ignatius de Loyóla, in his esoteric instructions to -his disciples, gives the following receipt for conjuring -up a vision of Christ Crucified: to obtain a vision, he -says, one must begin by visualising the background—first, -then, conjure up before you a great expanse of -intensely blue sky, such as the sky must be in Palestine, -next, picture against this sky a range of harsh, deeply -indented hills, red and green and black, then wait; and -suddenly upon this background will flash a cross with -Christ nailed to it.</p> - -<p>Teresa had got her background; and now the vision -came.</p> - -<p>But she was doubtful as to whether it was a vision -of the Past such as De Quincey had had in his dream, -or Monticelli shown in his picture; for one thing, she -found an almost irresistible pleasure in intagliating -her writing with antiquarian details, and indeed it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span> -was more a vision of a <i>situation</i>, a situation adorned -by the Past, than a vision of the Past itself.</p> - -<p>She wrote all day; neither thinking nor reading, -but closely guarding her mind from the contamination -of outside ideas.</p> - -<p>The play—the plot—was turning out very differently -from what she had expected; and as well as being a -transposing of life at Plasencia, it was, she realised with -the clear-sightedness of her generation, performing the -function assigned to dreams by Freud—namely, that of -expressing in symbols the desires of which one is ashamed.... -Though, for her own reasons, she shrank from it, -she was keenly aware of Concha’s sympathy these days. -It seemed that Concha had that rare, mysterious gift -that Pepa had had too—the gift of loving.</p> - -<p>Guy came down in June for a week-end; with Teresa -he was like a sulky child, but she saw that his eyes -were haggard, and she felt very sorry for him.</p> - -<p>“What about that Papist—I mean Roman Catholic, -the stolid Scot?” he asked at tea.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I think he’s all right. He’s a dear thing ...” -said Concha, hurriedly flinging herself into the breach.</p> - -<p>Teresa saw the Doña fumbling for her <i>lorgnette</i>. She -had found her <i>tête-à-tête</i> with Guy after his arrival—had -she been saying anything to him?</p> - -<p>“Uncomfortable, half-baked creature!” said Guy -angrily; “he’s like a certain obscure type of undergraduate -that used to lurk in the smaller colleges. They -were so obscure that no one had ever so much as seen -them, but their praises would be sung by even more -obscure, though, unfortunately, less invisible admirers, -who wore things which I’m sure they called <i>pince-nez</i>, -and ran grubby societies, and they would stop one at -lectures—simply sweating with enthusiasm—to tell one -that Clarke, or Jones, or whatever the creature’s name -was, had read a <i>marvellous</i> paper on Edward Carpenter<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[185]</span> -or Tagore at the Neolithic Pagans, or that it was Clarke -that had made some disgusting little arts-and-crafts -Madonna on the chimneypiece. And then years later -you hear that Clarke is chief of a native tribe in one of -the islands of the Pacific, or practising yoga in Burmah -... some mysterious will to adventure, I suppose, but -all so inconceivably indiscriminating and obscure and -half-baked! Well, at any rate, the veil of obscurity -has been rent and at last I have seen “Clarke” in the -flesh!” and he ended his shrill, gabbled complaint with -a petulant laugh.</p> - -<p>“He’s not in the least like that, Guy,” laughed -Concha; “he’s more like some eighteenth-century -highland shepherd teaching himself Greek out of a Greek -Testament,” she added, rather prettily.</p> - -<p>“Yes, and having religious doubts, which are resolved -by an examination of the elaborate anatomy of a -horse’s skull found on the moors—it’s all the same, -only more picturesque.”</p> - -<p>“And why are you so angry with our friend Mr. -Munroe, Guy?” asked the Doña.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t know! I’m like Nietsche, I hate -‘women, cows, Scotsmen, and all democrats,’” and he -gave an irritated little wriggle.</p> - -<p>How waspish the little creature had become! But -who can draw up a scale of suffering and say that an -aching heart is easier to bear than a wounded vanity?</p> - -<p>“Well, you haven’t told us anything about Spain,” -said Concha.</p> - -<p>“Oh, there’s nothing to tell ... it’s a threadbare -theme; <i>Childe Harold</i> has already been written.... -Of course, the theme of Don Juan lends itself to perennial -treatment....”</p> - -<p>The Doña laughed softly: “But it is so unjust that -Don Juan Tenorio is supposed only to be found in -Spain!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[186]</span></p> - -<p>“No more unjust than that Jesus Christ should be -looked upon as a Jew.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Guy!</i>”</p> - -<p>“That is really the <i>comble</i> to the insults we have put -upon that unfortunate people.”</p> - -<p>“Guy! I will <i>not</i> have you speaking like that in -my house,” said the Doña very sternly.</p> - -<p>“I beg your pardon,” he muttered, in some confusion; -and then took up his shrill monologue: “As a -matter of fact, Don Juan is the greatest glory of Spain; -he is own brother to Sancho Panza—a superb pair; -they are the true αὐτόχθων, made of the mud of <i>this</i> -planet, and they understand life as it is meant to be -lived down here. The rest of us shriek, like Coleridge, -for a ‘bread not made of wheat’.... Yes, we behave -idiotically, like creatures in some fable that has not -yet been written, when we want cheese for supper, we -take our bow and arrows and go and shoot at the moon—the -moon, which is the cradle of the English race....” -On and on went his voice, the others sitting round in -silence, to conceal their embarrassment or boredom.</p> - -<p>“To return to Don Juan, I see there is a new theory -that he is an <i>Eniautos Daimon</i>—one of those year-spirits -that die every winter and vegetation dies with -them, and are born again in spring with the crops and -things ... seeds, and crops and souls dying and -springing up again with Don Juan. So there is hope -for us all, <i>sic itur ad astra</i>—rakes during our life, manure -afterwards; so horticultural! I wonder if our friend -Mr. Munroe would make a good year-spirit?”</p> - -<p>This time they had beaten her: the blood rushed to -Teresa’s cheeks.</p> - -<p>“I expect he would only be able to make oats grow—‘man’s -food in Scotland,’” laughed Concha, as if it -were merely the ordinary Plasencia bandying of conceits; -“I think Dad would make a better one,” she<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[187]</span> -added; “he’s so good about flowers and crops and -things, and the farmers and people say he has ‘green -fingers,’ because everything he plants is sure to grow.”</p> - -<p>Teresa felt sincerely grateful to her: she had cooled -the situation, and, as well, had given the whole conversation -about Don Juan an amazing significance; the -play would have to be re-cast.</p> - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>On Monday morning Teresa had a little talk with -Guy before he went away—after all, he was but a -fantastic little creature, powerless to hurt her; and he -was suffering.</p> - -<p>“Don’t be cross with me, Guy,” she said, laying her -hand on his sleeve; “it’s so difficult to feel ... to feel -as you want me to ... you see, it’s so difficult with -some one one has known so many years; besides, you -know, you can’t have it both ways,” and she smiled.</p> - -<p>“How do you mean?” he asked sulkily.</p> - -<p>“Well, you see, you’re a poet. We take <i>poetry</i> -seriously, but sometimes we ... well, we smile a little -at <i>poets</i>. <i>Sub specie æternitatis</i>—isn’t that the expression? -You are <i>sub specie æternitatis</i>, and the worst of -being under that species is that both one’s value and -one’s values are apt to be ... well, snowed over by -the present. Milton’s daughters, at the actual moment -that they were grumbling about having to have <i>Paradise -Lost</i> dictated to them, were really quite justified—the -darning of their fichus or ... or young Praise-the-Lord -Simpkins waiting for them by the stile were -much more important <i>at that moment</i>. It’s only afterwards, -when all these things—the young man, the stile -and the fichus—have turned long ago into dust, and -<i>Paradise Lost</i> grows more glorious every year, that they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[188]</span> -turn into frivolous, deplorable fools. You can’t have -it both ways, old Guy.”</p> - -<p>Her instinct had been true—this was the only possible -balm.</p> - -<p>Now, at last, he knew what she really thought of -him—she mentioned him in the same breath with -Milton; she thought him a genius.</p> - -<p>He felt wildly happy and excited, but, of course, he -did not allow this to show in his face.</p> - -<p>Then he looked at her: the pointed arch her mouth -went into when she smiled; the beautiful oval teeth, -the dark, rather weary eyes, for the moment a tender, -slightly quizzical smile lurking in their corners ... -oh! he wanted this creature for his own; he <i>must</i> get -her.</p> - -<p class="tb">“What about this thing you’re writing?” he asked -with a little gulp.</p> - -<p>“What thing?”</p> - -<p>“Concha said you were writing something. What -is it ... a ‘strong’ novel?”</p> - -<p>“It’s ... it’s historical, I suppose.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I see—‘historical fiction.’”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t fiction at all; it’s a play.”</p> - -<p>“Well, anyway, may I read it?”</p> - -<p>“Oh no! It isn’t finished ... it....”</p> - -<p>“We must get it acted, when it is.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no!” and she shrank back, as if he had -threatened to strike her.</p> - -<p>“Of course it must be acted; it’s <i>much</i> better than -having to struggle with publishers, that’s the devil—cracking -one’s knuckles against the Bodley Head, tilting -with Mr. Heinemann’s Windmill, foundering in Mr. -Murray’s Ship ... it’s....”</p> - -<p>“But nothing would induce me to have it either -published or acted. It’s just for myself.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[189]</span></p> - -<p>“Oh, but you’ll change your mind when it’s finished—it’s -biological, one can’t help it; the act of parturition -isn’t complete till the thing is published or produced—you’ll -see. I was up at Cambridge with the chap who -has started this company of strolling players—they’re -very ‘cultured’ and ‘pure’ and all that sort of thing, -but they don’t act badly. If you send it to him, I’ll -tell him he must produce it. They might come and do -it here—on the lawn.”</p> - -<p>“No! no! no!” she cried in terror, “I couldn’t -bear it. I don’t want it acted at all.”</p> - -<p>He looked at her, a little impishly: “You mark my -words, it <i>will</i> be acted ... here on the lawn.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>[190]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</h2> - -</div> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p>It was the eve of Concha’s wedding; the house was full, -and overflowing into Rudge’s cottage, into Rendall’s -cottage, and into the houses of neighbours: there were -Guy and his parents, Sir Roger and Lady Cust, there was -Colonel Dundas, there was “Crippin” Arbuthnot, Rory’s -major who was to be best man, and Elfrida Penn, who -was to be chief bridesmaid, and Harry Sinclair and his -children, and Hugh Mallam and Dick’s cousin and -partner, Edward Lane.</p> - -<p>A wedding is a <i>thing</i>—as concrete and compact as a -gold coin stamped with a date and a symbol; for, -though of the substance of Time, it has the qualities of -Matter; colour, shape, tangibleness. Or rather, perhaps -it freezes Time into the semblance of Eternity, but does -not rob it of its colours: these it keeps as Morris’s gods -did theirs in the moonlight.</p> - -<p>We have all awakened on a winter’s morning to the -fantastic joke that during the night a heavy fall of -snow has played on Space; just such a joke does a -wedding play on Time.</p> - -<p>And who can keep out the <i>estantigua</i>, the demon -army of the restless dead, screaming in the wind and led -by Hellequin?</p> - -<p>Now Hellequin is the old romance form of Harlequin, -and Harlequin leads the wedding revels. But it is in -vain that, like Ophelia, he “turns life, death and fate -into prettiness and favour”: we recognise the eyes -behind the mask, we know of what army he is captain.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>[191]</span></p> - -<p>And the wedding guests themselves; though each, -individually, was anodyne, even commonplace, yet, -under that strange light, they were fantastic, sinister—they -were <i>folk</i>.</p> - -<p>In her childhood that word had always terrified -Teresa—there was her old nightmare of the Canterbury -Pilgrims, knight, franklin, wife of Bath, streaming down -the chimney with strange mocking laughter to keep -Walpurgis-night in a square tiled kitchen.... Bishops, -priests, deacons, sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, -lectors, confessors, virgins, widows, and all the holy -people of God.</p> - -<p>Yes, they were <i>folk</i>.</p> - -<p>How pawky Edward Lane was looking—uncannily -humorous and shrewd! What six-plied, cynical thing -was he about to say to Jasper?</p> - -<p>However, what he did say was: “You don’t get -cake like that at school—do you, young man?”</p> - -<p>And Lady Cust, with her light rippling laugh -and her observant eyes—noticing the cut of one’s -skirt and whether one asked her if she <i>took</i> sugar -in her tea—when her face was in repose it was sad, -like that of a Christian slave in the land of the -Saracens.</p> - -<p>“Oh yes, when we were in Pau we motored over to -Lourdes, when one of the pilgrimages was on. Some -of them ... well, really, they were like goblins, poor -creatures ... appalling!” and she actually smiled -reminiscently.</p> - -<p>Teresa remembered Guy’s having told her that the -favourite amusement of his Brabazon uncles when they -were drunk had been potting with their revolvers at the -village idiot.</p> - -<p>She looked at Colonel Dundas: solemn, heavy, with -a walrus moustache, and big, owl-like spectacles, each -glass bisected with a straight line; at Sir Roger Cust,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>[192]</span> -a dapper “hard-bitten” little man, with small, sharp -gray eyes—surely <i>they</i> were not sinister.</p> - -<p>“Old Tommy Cunningham!” Sir Roger was saying; -“that takes one a long way back. Wasn’t he Master -at one time of the Linlithgowshire?”</p> - -<p>“Yes ... from eighteen ... eighteen seventy-five, -I think, to eighty ... eighty-<i>six</i>, I think. I couldn’t -tell you for certain, off-hand, but I’ll look it up in my -diary,” said Colonel Dundas; “he was a first-rate shot, -too,” he added.</p> - -<p>“Magnificent!” agreed Sir Roger, “Aye, úhu, aye, -úhu. D’you remember how he used always to say -that?”</p> - -<p>“So he did! Picked it up from the keepers and -gillies, I suppose.”</p> - -<p>“He was the coolest chap I’ve ever known. Do you -remember his mare White Heather?”</p> - -<p>“Yes ... let me see ... she was out of Lady of -the Lake, by ... by....”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, that’s the one. Well, you know, he had -<i>thousands</i> on her for the National, and I was standing -near him, and when she came in ... third, I think it -was....”</p> - -<p>“Fourth I <i>think</i>, but....”</p> - -<p>“Fourth, then. Well, old Tommy just shut up his -glasses with a snap and said, ‘Aye, úhu, well, poor lassie, -<i>I</i> thought she’d win somehow.’ Didn’t turn a hair, and -he’d thousands on her!”</p> - -<p>They were silent for a few seconds; then Sir Roger -sighed and smiled: “Well, all that was a long time -ago, Jimmy. <i>Eheu fugaces, Posthume, Posthume</i>.... -Isn’t that how it goes, Guy? Funny how these old tags -stick in one’s mind!” and he rubbed his chin and smiled -complacently; and Teresa felt sure he would wake up -in the night and chuckle with pride over the aptness -of his Latin quotation.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>[193]</span></p> - -<p>Yes, but what was “old Tommy Cunningham” doing -here? For he brought with him a rush of dreams and -of old cold hopes, and a world as dead as the moon—dead -men, dead horses, dead hounds.</p> - -<p>Aye, úhu, fugax es, Cunningham, Cunningham.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you adore albinos?” shrilled Elfrida Penn -in her peacock scream, while that intensely conventional -little man, “Crippin” Arbuthnot grew crimson to the -top of his bald head, and Lady Cust’s face began to -twitch—clearly, she was seized by a violent desire to -giggle.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps you would like to go up to your room, Lady -Cust? You must be tired,” said the Doña.</p> - -<p>“Well, thank you very much, perhaps it would be -a good plan; though it’s difficult to tear oneself away -from this lovely garden—<i>How</i> you must love it!” and -she turned to Teresa; then again to the Doña: “I -have been envying you your delphiniums—they’re much -finer than ours, ain’t they, Roger? Do you cinder -them in the spring?” and they began walking towards -the house, talking about gardens; but all the time they -were watching each other, wary, alert, hostile.</p> - -<p>“What a delicious room! And such roses!” Lady -Cust exclaimed when they reached her bedroom.</p> - -<p>Her maid had already unpacked; and on her dressing-table -was unfurled one of these folding series of leather -photograph frames, and each one contained a photograph -of Francis, her eldest son, who had been killed in -the War. There were several of him in the uniform of -the Rifle Brigade; one of him in cricket flannels, one -on a horse, two or three in khaki; a little caricature -of him had also been unpacked, done by a girl in their -neighbourhood, when he was a Sandhurst cadet; at -the bottom of it was scrawled in a large, unsophisticated -feminine hand: <i>Wishing you a ripping Xmas</i>, and then -two or three marks of exclamation.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>[194]</span></p> - -<p>It belonged, that little inscription, to the good old -days of the reign of King Edward, when girls wore -sailor hats in the country, and shirts with stiff collars -and ties, when every one, or so it seemed to Lady Cust, -was normal and simple and comfortable, and had the -same ambitions, namely, to hit hard at tennis, and to -ride straight to hounds.</p> - -<p>“Were you at Ascot this year?” “Have you been -much to the Opera this season?” “What do you -think of the mallet for this year? Seems to <i>me</i> it -would take a crane to lift it!”</p> - -<p>Such, in those days, had been the sensible conversational -openings; while, recently, the man who had -taken her into dinner had begun by asking her the name -of her butcher; another by asking her if she liked -string. Mad! Quite mad!</p> - -<p>Of course, there were cultured people in those days -too, but they were just as easy to talk to as the others. -“Do you sing Guy d’Hardelot’s ‘I know a Lovely -Garden?’ There’s really <i>nothing</i> to touch his songs.” -“Have you been to the Academy yet? And oh, <i>did</i> -you see that picture next to Sargeant’s portrait of -Lady ——? It’s of Androcles taking a thorn out of -<i>such</i> a jolly lion’s paw.” “Oh yes, of course, that’s -from dear old Omar, isn’t it? There’s no one like him, -is there? You know, I like the Rubaiyat really -better than Tennyson.”</p> - -<p>And now—there were strikes, and nearly all their -neighbours had either let or sold their places; and Guy -had the most idiotic ideas and the most extraordinary -friends; and Francis....</p> - -<p>The Doña’s eyes rested for a moment on the photographs; -she was too short-sighted to be able to distinguish -any details; but she could see that they were -of a young man, and guessed that he was the son who -had been killed.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>[195]</span></p> - -<p>“It’s much better for <i>her</i>,” she thought bitterly, “she -hasn’t the fear for his soul to keep her awake.”</p> - -<p>Lady Cust saw that she had noticed the photographs, -and a dozen invisible spears flew out to guard her grief. -Then she remembered having heard that the Doña had -lost a daughter: “But that’s not the same as one’s -eldest son—besides, she has grandchildren.”</p> - -<p>Aloud she said, “One good thing about having no -daughter, I always feel, is that one is saved having a -wedding in the house. It must mean such endless -organising and worry, and what with servants being so -difficult nowadays.... But this is such a perfect -house for a wedding—so gay! We are so shut in with -trees. Dear old Rory, I’m so fond of him; he’s my only -nephew, and ... er ... Concha is such a pretty -thing.”</p> - -<p>It was clear that at this point the Doña was expected -to praise Rory; but she merely gave a vague, courteous -smile.</p> - -<p>“I have heard so much about you all from my Guy,” -continued Lady Cust; “he is so devoted to you all, and -you have been <i>so</i> good to him.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! we are all very fond of Guy,” said the Doña -stiffly.</p> - -<p>“Well, it’s very nice of you to say so—he’s a dear -old thing,” she paused, “and your other daughter, -Teresa, she’s tremendously clever, isn’t she? I should -so love to get to know her, but I’m afraid she’d despise -me—I’m <i>such</i> a fool!” and she gave her rippling laugh.</p> - -<p>The Doña, again, only smiled conventionally.</p> - -<p>“Well, it’s all ...” and Lady Cust gave a little -sigh. “You see, Rory was my only sister’s only child, -and she died when he was seven, so he has been almost -like my own son. I wonder ... don’t you think it’s -... it’s a little sudden?”</p> - -<p>“What is?” asked the Doña icily.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>[196]</span></p> - -<p>“Well, they haven’t known each other very long, have -they? I don’t know ... marriage ... is so ...”</p> - -<p>So this foolish, giggling, pink and white woman was -not pleased about the marriage! She probably thought -Concha was not good enough for her nephew.</p> - -<p>And the Doña who, for the last few days, had been -half hoping that the Immaculate Conception herself, -star-crowned, blue-robed, would to-morrow step down -from the clouds to forbid the banns and save her namesake -from perdition—the Doña actually found herself -saying with some heat: “They’ve known each other -for nearly a year; that is surely a long time, these -days. I see no reason why it shouldn’t be a most happy -marriage.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’m <i>sure</i> ... you know ... one always ...” -murmured Lady Cust.</p> - -<p>“Well, I must leave you to your rest. You have -everything that you want?” and the Doña sailed out -of the room.</p> - -<p>Lady Cust smiled a little, and then sighed.</p> - -<p>Dear old Rory! And what would Mab, her dead -sister, think of it all? Oh, why had it not been she -that had died in those old, happy days?</p> - -<p>She went to her dressing-table and took up the folding -leather frame. They were the photographs of a very -beautiful young man, a true Brabazon—a longer limbed, -merrier eyed Rory, with a full, rather insolent mouth.</p> - -<p>Yes, it was funny—she had been apt to call him by -the names of her dead brothers: “Jack! Geoffrey! -Desmond! <i>Francis</i>, I mean.” She had never had any -difficulty in understanding Francis—how they used to -laugh together!</p> - -<p>She remembered how she used to dread his marriage; -jealously watching him with his favourite partners at -tennis and at dances, and suspiciously scanning the -photographs of unknown and improperly pretty young<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197"></a>[197]</span> -ladies in his bedroom: <i>Best of luck! Rosie; Ever your -chum, Vera</i>—sick at the thought of perhaps having to -welcome a musical-comedy actress as Francis’s wife.</p> - -<p>If only she had known! For now, were she suddenly -to wake up and find it was for Francis’s wedding that -she was here—the bride Concha Lane, or that extraordinary -Miss Penn, or, even, “Rosie” or “Vera,” her -heart would burst, she would go mad with happiness.</p> - -<p>And she had a friend who actually dared to be heartbroken -because she had suddenly got a letter from her -only son, telling her that he had been married at a -registry to a war-widow, whom she knew to be a tenth-rate -little minx with bobbed hair and the mind of a -barmaid.</p> - -<p>But Francis ... she would never be at his wedding. -She would never hear his voice again—Francis was -dead.</p> - -<p class="tb">When, an hour later, Sir Roger looked in on his way -to dress, he found her lying on the sofa, reading the -<i>Sketch</i>, smiling and serene.</p> - -<p>“Well, May,” he said, “I saw you! You were on -the point of disgracing yourself just before you went -upstairs. <i>Extraordinary</i> thing! Will you never get -over this trick of giggling? You simply have no self-control, -darling.”</p> - -<p>“I <i>know</i>, isn’t it dreadful? Well, what do you think -of ’em all?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, they seem all right. Rory’s girl’s extraordinary -pretty—pretty manners, too.”</p> - -<p>“Charming! ‘I should lo-o-ove to,’” and she -reproduced admirably Concha’s company voice. “However,” -she went on, “we have a great deal to be thankful -for—it might have been Miss Penn. ‘Don’t you -ado-o-ore albinos?’ Oh, I shall <i>never</i> forget it ... -and Major Arbuthnot’s face! Still, if it had been she,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198"></a>[198]</span> -I must say I should have loved to see the sensation -produced on Edinburgh by old Jimmy’s walking down -Princes Street with her.”</p> - -<p>Sir Roger gave a hoarse chuckle.</p> - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>As it was too large a party to get comfortably into -the dining-room, a big tent had been pitched on the -lawn, and several long narrow tables joined together, -and there they dined, an ill-assorted company.</p> - -<p>At one end Dr. Sinclair was shouting to Lady Cust, -“Well, I’d send him to that co-education place, but, -unfortunately, they don’t ... er ... <span class="smcap">learn</span> anything -there. They make the fourth form read Tolstoy’s -<i>Resurrection</i>, which is not ... er ... only the most -... er ... <span class="smcap">trashy</span> of all the works of genius, but the -only ... er ... <i>lesson</i> to be learned from it is the -... er ... inadvisability of ... er ... <span class="smcap">seducing -a Russian peasant girl</span>, and ... er ... unfortunately, -an ... er ... er ... English schoolboy hasn’t -many opportunities of doing that ... er ... er....”</p> - -<p>He looked at her, slightly puzzled—her face was pink -with suppressed laughter; but, as she was meant to -laugh, why suppress it?</p> - -<p>Elfrida Penn was terrifying “Crippin” Arbuthnot -by searching questions as to whether the erotic adventures -of his schooldays had been similar to those -described in a recent novel about life at a public -school.</p> - -<p>Edward Lane was saying to Jollypot, “Yes, before -my niece—Olive Jackson, you know—went to school, -I said to her, ‘my advice to you is: <i>keep your hands -clean</i>.’ I always....”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Mr. Lane, that was beautiful!” cried Jollypot.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199"></a>[199]</span></p> - -<p>“Yes, I always say a lady can be known by the way -she keeps her <i>hands</i>.”</p> - -<p>Jollypot’s face fell.</p> - -<p>But Dick and Hugh, at any rate, yelling at each other -across the intervening forms of Concha and Rory, were -in perfect harmony. “I say, Dick, do you remember -old Bright, the butler at your father’s? And how angry -he used to be when we asked him if he was any relation -of John Bright?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, rather; and do you remember how he used -to say, ‘Port, claret, sherry, madeira, sir?’ always in -that order.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, and how he used to puff it down one’s neck? -And the severe way your mother used to say, ‘Neither, -thank you, Bright’!”</p> - -<p>Then, from the other end, they would catch sight of -the Doña glaring at them indignantly through her -<i>lorgnette</i>, and Dick would turn hurriedly to Lady -Cust.</p> - -<p>As to Teresa, she was indulging in that form of -intoxication that has been described before—that of -æsthetically withdrawing herself from a large, chattering -company. Once when she was doing it David had -guessed, and had whispered to her, “The laird’s been -deed these twa hoors, but I wisna for spoiling guid -company,” in reference to a host who had inconspicuously -died, sitting bolt upright at the head of his table, at -about the third round of port.</p> - -<p>A branch, or something, outside was casting a shadow -on the tent’s canvas wall—as usual, it was in the form -of Dante’s profile. She had seen it in patches of damp -on ceilings, in burning coals, in the clouds, in shadows -cast on the white walls of the bath-room.</p> - -<p>Perhaps he had not really looked like that at all, -and the famous fresco portrait had been originally -merely a patch of damp, elaborated into the outline of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200"></a>[200]</span> -a human profile by some wag of the fourteenth century, -and called Dante; and perhaps the Dante he meant -was not the poet at all, but some popular buffoon, -Pantaloon or Harlequin, in the comedies at street -corners—the Charlie Chaplin, in fact, of his age....</p> - -<p>But for some time Colonel Dundas had been booming -away in her right ear, and it was high time she should -listen.</p> - -<p>“... <i>always a note-book on the links, and every shot -recorded</i>—it’s a golden rule. I’ve advised more than -one Amateur Champion to follow it. You see my point, -don’t you? The next time you play on the same links -you whip out your note-book and say, ‘Let me see—<i>Muirfield, -sixth hole, Sept. 5, 1920</i>: hit apparently good -drive down centre of the course, found almost impossible -approach shot owing to cross bunkers. <i>N.B. -Keep to the left at the sixth hole.</i>’ You see my point, -don’t you?”</p> - -<p>Opposite to them, Guy was screaming excitedly to -Elfrida Penn, who seemed to be sucking in his words -through her thick lips: “Of course, there’s <i>nothing</i> so -beautiful and significant, from the point of view of -composition, as a lot of people sitting at a narrow table—it’s -the making of the Christian religion. Aubrey -Beardsley ought to have done a <i>Cena</i>: the Apostles, -in curly white wigs like these little tight clustering roses—Dorothy -Perkins, or whatever they’re called—and -black masks, sitting down one side of a narrow refectory -table with plates piled up with round fruits, the wall -behind them fluted and garlanded in stucco, St. John, -his periwigged head on Jesus’ shoulder, leering up at -him, and Judas, sitting a little apart, a white Pierrot, -one finger pressed against his button mouth, his eyes -round with horror and glee....”</p> - -<p>“Yes, every year I was in India I read it through, -from <i>cover to cover</i>,” boomed Colonel Dundas proudly.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201"></a>[201]</span> -(Oh yes, of course, Dobbin and the <i>History of the Punjab</i>!) -“It’s a wonderful style. He comes next to Shakespeare, -in my estimation.” (Not Dobbin and the <i>History of the -Punjab</i>, then!) “Yes, every year I read the whole of -the <i>French Revolution</i> through from cover to cover—a -very great book. And when, by mistake, John Stuart -Mill burned the manuscript, what do you think Carlyle -did?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know. What did he do?”</p> - -<p>“He sat down and read through all the works of -Fenimore Cooper—read ’em through from <i>beginning -to end</i>,” and he stared at her in solemn triumph.</p> - -<p>“Really?” she gasped, “I don’t quite understand. -Fenimore Cooper—he wrote about Red Indians, didn’t -he? Why did he read <i>him</i>?”</p> - -<p>“<i>Why?</i> To distract his mind, of course. Extraordinary -pluck!” and he glared at her angrily.</p> - -<p>At this point Sir Roger, who had not been making -much way with the Doña, leaned across the table, and -said, “I say, Jimmy, Mrs. Lane and I have been talking -about Gib.—did I ever tell you about the time I dined -with your old Mess there? Owing to my being a connection -of yours the Colonel asked me to choose a tune -for the pipes;” then, turning to the Doña, he said in -parenthesis, “I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard -the bagpipes, but—don’t tell Colonel Dundas—we don’t -think much of ’em this side of the border.” Then -again to Colonel Dundas, “Well, for the life of me, I -couldn’t remember the name of a tune, and then suddenly -the <i>Deil amang the Tailors</i> came into my head, so out -I came with it, as pleased as Punch. Well, I thought -the Colonel looked a bit grim, and I saw ’em all looking -at each other, but the order was given to the piper, and -he got going, and, by gad, it <i>was</i> a tune—nearly took the -roof off the place! I thought I should be deaf for life—turned -out to be the loudest tune they’d got;” then,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202"></a>[202]</span> -again to the extremely bored Doña, “but it’s a glorious -place, old Gib. I remember in the eighties....”</p> - -<p>Lady Cust, watching from the other end of the table, -was much amused by the <i>engouement</i> her husband had -developed, since arriving at Plasencia, for the society -of Jimmy Dundas; it was clearly a case of “better the -bore I know....”</p> - -<p>“Yes, these were great days,” Colonel Dundas was -saying; “we’re the oldest regiment of the line, you -know—Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard; that’s what we -call ourselves—Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard!” and he -chuckled proudly.</p> - -<p>And this from a pillar of the Scottish Episcopal -Church!... Oh pale Galilean, <i>hast</i> thou conquered?</p> - -<p class="tb">Then a loving-cup filled with punch began to go the -round and they all drank from it in turn, rising to their -feet as they did so, and saying, “Concha! Rory!”</p> - -<p>When every one had had a sip, Rory, rather pale, -got up to return thanks.</p> - -<p>“Ladies and Gentlemen!... (pause) ... I do -think it’s <i>extraordinary</i> kind of you to drink our health -in this very nice way. We are most awfully grateful ... -(pause) ... I’m afraid I’m not a Cicero or a Lloyd -George, or anything like that ... (Laughter) ... old -Crippin there will tell you speeches ain’t much in my -line....” Then he had a sudden brilliant idea: -“But there’s one thing I should like to ask you all to -do. You see, I’m awfully grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Lane -for giving me Concha, and my uncle has always been -most awfully good to me, and I’d like to ask you all to -drink their health ... and if my mother is anywhere -about ... and others ... I know they’ll join in the -toast, in nectar, or whatever they drink up there,” and -he ended with an apologetic little laugh.</p> - -<p>The company was very much touched; Edward Lane<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203"></a>[203]</span> -blew his nose violently, and muttered to Jollypot that -young Dundas was evidently a very nice-feeling young -fellow.</p> - -<p>The atmosphere having become emotional, the ghosts -walked.</p> - -<p>Colonel Dundas had a vision of Rory’s mother—lovely -Mab Brabazon—as he had first seen her, radiant -and laughing at the Northern Meeting of twenty-nine -years ago; but then, ever since, he had so often had -that vision: at Church Parade, at polo in India, playing -golf in Scotland, playing Bridge in any of his ten clubs—anywhere, -everywhere, he might see Mab Brabazon. -And little had Teresa guessed that as Carlyle read -Fenimore Cooper, so <i>he</i> had read the <i>French Revolution</i>—“to -distract his mind.”</p> - -<p>Sir Roger and Lady Cust thought of Francis; more -than one of Pepa. But Dick thought of his sallow -puritanic sister Joannah, who had been so much older -than himself that their interests had never clashed, and -all his memories of her were of petting and spoiling—“Little -Dickie doesn’t <i>take</i> spoiling, his temper is so -sweet,” she used to say—his eyes began to smart. And -Hugh Mallam, too, thought of poor old Joannah Lane, -and he remembered how, in the days when his ambition -had been to be a painter, he used to wonder whether, if -offered the certainty of becoming as great a one as Sir -Frederick Leighton, on condition of marrying Joannah, -he would be able to bring himself to do it.</p> - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>After dinner they went into the garden; some of them -sitting on the lawn, some of them wandering about -among the flowers.</p> - -<p>The border was in the summer prime of lilies and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a>[204]</span> -peonies and anchusa and delphiniums; to its right was -a great clump of lavender nearly ripe, and at the stage -when it looks like veins of porphyry running through a -rock of jade; a little to its left was a stiff row of hollyhocks.</p> - -<p>“An amazingly distinguished flower, hollyhock!” -said Guy, “it always gives a <i>cachet</i> to its surroundings, -so different from sweetpeas, which look sordid in a dusty -station garden, and fragrantly <i>bourgeois</i> beside the -suburban lawn on which Miss Smith is playing tennis -in lavender muslin....”</p> - -<p>“<i>Guy!</i>” cried Lady Cust, looking round anxiously -at the company, and laughing apologetically; Guy, -however, went on undaunted; “but hollyhock is like -the signature of a great painter, it testifies that any -subject can be turned into art—or, rather, into that -domain which lies between painting and poetry, where -damoizelles, dressed in quaintly damasked brocades, -talk of friendship and death and the stars in curious -stiff conceits.”</p> - -<p>“Guy! You <i>are</i> a duffer,” laughed Lady Cust again.</p> - -<p>“Well, here come some of these damoizelles in their -quaint brocades—do you think they are talking about -friendship and death and the stars?</p> - -<p>“Do you think they are talking about friendship -and death and the stars? Do you think they are -talking about friendship and death and the stars?” -said Hugh Mallam with his jolly laugh, and he -nodded towards Concha and Elfrida Penn and Lettice -Moore and Winifred Norton, who, dressed in a variety -of pale colours, were walking arm in arm up the -border.</p> - -<p>Sainte-Beuve in a fine passage describes the moment -in a journey south when “en descendant le fleuve, on a -passé une de ces lignes par delà lesquelles le soleil et le -ciel sont plus beaux.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205"></a>[205]</span></p> - -<p>Such a line—beyond which “the sun and the sky are -more beautiful”—cuts across the range of every one’s -vision; and the group of flower-bordered girls were -certainly beyond that line for all who were watching -them. Once again Teresa felt as if she were suddenly -seeing the present as the past; and as long as she lived -it would always be as that picture that she would see -Concha’s wedding.</p> - -<p>“<i>Vera incessu patuit dea</i>,” murmured Hugh, and -then he added, a little wistfully, “they <i>do</i> look jolly!”</p> - -<p>“You’d look just as jolly far off, in that light, Hugh,” -said Dick, who was sitting blinking at his flowers, like -a large, contented tom-cat.</p> - -<p>The younger men who, with the exception of Guy, -had been walking up and down between the hawthorn -hedge, smoking cigars and deep in talk—probably about -the War—went and joined the four girls; and after a -few moments of general chatter Arnold flung his arm -round Concha’s shoulder and Teresa could hear him -saying: “Come on, Conch,” and they wandered off -by themselves. She was glad; for she knew that -Concha had felt acutely the estrangement from Arnold -caused by his jealousy at her engagement.</p> - -<p>Then Rory came and joined the party on the lawn, -and sat down on the grass at the feet of Lady Cust.</p> - -<p>“Well, what about a little Bridge?” said Dick, and -he, Hugh, Sir Roger, and Colonel Dundas, went indoors -for a rubber.</p> - -<p>Shortly afterwards Lady Cust and Rory wandered off -together in the direction of the lavender.</p> - -<p>“Well, Rorrocks, so you’re really going to do -it?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Aunt May, I’m in for it this time ... the -great adventure!” and he laughed a little nervously, -“Concha ... she ... don’t you think she’s -pretty?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a>[206]</span></p> - -<p>“Awfully pretty, Rory, I do really ... a dear -thing!”</p> - -<p>They felt that there were many things they wanted -to say to each other, these two; but, apart from reserve -and false shame, they would have found it hard to -express these things in words.</p> - -<p>“Well, time does fly! It seems just the other day -that I was scurrying up to Edinburgh for your christening -... and Fran ... Guy was only a year old.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, ... I can hardly believe it myself,” and -again he gave a little nervous laugh.</p> - -<p>“Well, dear old thing,” and she laid a hand on his -arm, “I’m your godmother, you know, and your mother -and I ... I don’t believe we were ever away from -each other till I married ... you’re sure ... it’s -going to be all right, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Aunt May, it’s going to be all right.... I’m -sure,” and again he laughed; and although he was very -pale, his eyes were bright and happy.</p> - -<p class="tb">“Shall we go and walk down the border and look -beautiful too?” said Guy to Teresa.</p> - -<p>“Well, and what about the play?” he asked, when -they were out of ear-shot.</p> - -<p>“It’s finished at last ... so I can breathe again. -While I was writing I felt rather like a sort of Thomas -the Rhymer, a thrall to ghosts and fairies; and I got -half to hate the whole thing, as one is always inclined -to hate a master.”</p> - -<p>She was trying to be friendly, and thought it would -please him if she told him about such intimate things; -but he was not pleased.</p> - -<p>Though he had never written anything long enough -to give him at first hand the feeling she had described, -yet he realised it was what certainly <i>would</i> be felt by a -genuine dramatist or novelist; and it was not in his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207"></a>[207]</span> -picture that Teresa should be either—Sophocles may -have led his own choruses, but he did not lead those of -Euripides.</p> - -<p>“The play’s finished, and yet all this,” and she waved -her arm vaguely in the direction of the house and garden -and all the groups of people, “and yet all this goes on -just the same.”</p> - -<h3>4</h3> - -<p>Next day came the queer dislocated morning—every -one either at a loose end or frantically busy,—the arrival -of Dr. Nigel Dundas, Bishop of Dunfermline, Colonel -Dundas’s first cousin, who had travelled all night from -Scotland, to be there to marry Rory; the hurried cold -luncheon; the getting the Custs and people off to the -church; then Parker’s and Teresa’s fingers fumbling -with hooks and eyes and arranging the veil.</p> - -<p>When the bride was dressed, and ready to go downstairs, -the Doña, who had not appeared all morning, -and was not, of course, going to the church ceremony, -walked into the room, pale and heavy-eyed.</p> - -<p>She held out her arms, “Come to me, my Concha!” -she said.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Doña ... if only ... I couldn’t ... it’ll be -all right,” Concha whispered between little sobs, “and -anyway, your baby will always love you ... and ...”</p> - -<p>“The Purissima and all the Saints bless you, my -child,” said the Doña in a stifled voice, and she made the -sign of the Cross on her forehead, “but you mustn’t cry -on your wedding day. Come, let me put your veil -straight.”</p> - -<p>Teresa, watching this little scene, felt a sudden pang -of remorse—why had she not more control over her -imagination? Why had she allowed her mother to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208"></a>[208]</span> -turn, in the play, into such a sinister and shameless -figure?</p> - -<p>Then they went down to the hall, where Dick was -contemplating in a pier-glass, with considerable complacency, -the reflection of his stout morning-coated -person.</p> - -<p>“Well, it’s quite time we were starting, Concha,” -he called out; and with that amazing ignoring of the -emotional conventions by which men are continually -hurting the feelings of women, it was not till he and -Concha were well on their way to church, that he -remembered to congratulate her on her appearance.</p> - -<p>Teresa, Jollypot, and the children, had gone on ahead -in the open car—past hens, past hedges, past motor-bicycles, -past cottage gardens; past fields of light -feathery oats, so thickly sown with poppies that -they seemed to flicker together into one fabric; -past fields of barley that had swallowed the wind, -which bent and ruffled the ductile imprisoning substance -that it informed; past fields of half-ripe -wheat, around the stalks of which Teresa, who, since -she had been writing, had fallen into an almost exhausting -habit of automatic observation, noticed the -light tightly twisting itself in strands of greenish -lavender. And there was a field from which the hay -had been carried long enough to have allowed a fresh -crop of poppies to spring up; to see them thus alone and -unhampered gave one such a stab of joyous relief that -one could almost believe the hay to have been but a -parasite scum drained away to reveal this red substratum -of beauty. All these things, as they rushed -past, were remarked by Teresa’s weary, active eyes -till they had reached the church and deposited Anna -and Jasper with the bridesmaids, waiting in the -porch, and at last they were walking up the aisle -and being ushered into their places by Bob Norton.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209"></a>[209]</span></p> - -<p>There stood Major Arbuthnot, whispering and giggling -with Rory, who was looking very white and bright-eyed. -After all, he was not lower than the birds—he, too, felt -the thrill of mating-time.</p> - -<p>Then the opening bars of the <i>Voice that Breathed -o’er Eden</i>, and a stiffening to attention of Major -Arbuthnot, and a sudden smile from Rory, and all eyes -turning to the door—Concha was entering on her -father’s arm, her train held up by Jasper.</p> - -<p>Then the Oxford voice of Dr. Nigel Dundas, droning -on, droning on, till it reached the low antiphon with -Rory:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I, James Roderick Brabazon,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>I, James Roderick Brabazon</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">take thee, Maria Concepcion,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>take thee, Maria Concepcion</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">to have and to hold,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>to have and to hold</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">from this day forward,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>from this day forward</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">for better for worse,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>for better for worse</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">for richer for poorer,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>for richer for poorer</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">in sickness and in health,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>in sickness and in health</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">to love and to cherish,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>to love and to cherish</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">till death us do part,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>till death us do part</i>,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">according to God’s holy ordinance;</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>according to God’s holy ordinance</i>;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">and thereto I plight thee my troth,</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><i>and thereto I plight thee my troth</i>.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Then Concha’s turn and then more prayers; and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210"></a>[210]</span> -before long they were all laughing and chattering and -wiping away tears in the vestry; while in the church -the band was playing shamelessly secular tunes, -though Mr. Moore had stipulated that there should be -“no vaudeville music.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Why</i> are people crying? A wedding isn’t a <i>sad</i> -thing,” said Anna, in a loud and argumentative voice.</p> - -<p class="tb">Then down the aisle and down the path between a -double hedge of Girl Guides, and whirling back to the -Plasencia garden and masses and masses of people.</p> - -<p>Teresa was immediately sucked into a vortex of -activities—elbowing her way through the crowd with a -cup of tea for one old lady and an ice for another; -steering a third to one of the tents, to choose for herself -what she wanted; making suitable rejoinders to such -questions and exclamations as: “How charming dear -Concha looks, I really think she’s the prettiest bride I’ve -ever seen.” “Do tell me what the red ribbon is that -Captain Dundas is wearing—the one that isn’t the M.C.? -Some one said they thought it was a Belgian order.” -“Tell me dear; it was the Scottish Church Service, -wasn’t it? I mean, the Scotch Church that’s like <i>ours</i>? -I did so like it ... so much more ... well, <i>delicate</i> -than ours.” “Oh, just look at those masses of white -butterflies on the lavender! What a splendid crop -you’ll have! Do you send it up to London?”</p> - -<p>Then, as in a nightmare, she heard Anna proclaiming -proudly that she had eaten eight ices, and Jasper ten; -well, it was too late now to take any measures.</p> - -<p>Also, she had time to be amused at noticing that Mrs. -Moore had managed to get introduced to Lady Cust, -and was talking to her eagerly.</p> - -<p>Later on she heard Lettice Moore saying to another -bridesmaid, “Poor old Eben! He was frightfully cut -up when he heard about the engagement,” and, in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211"></a>[211]</span> -foolish way one has of moving indifferently among the -world’s great tragedies—earthquakes, famines, wars—and -suddenly feeling a tightening of the throat, and a -smarting of the eyes as one realises that at that moment -a bullfinch is probably dying in China, Teresa suddenly -felt a wave of pity and tenderness sweep over her for -Eben, sitting in his cabin (did senior “snotties” have a -cabin to themselves? Well, it didn’t really matter), -so poorly furnished in comparison with the gramophones -and silver photograph frames, and gorgeous cushions -of his mates, his arms, with the red hands whose fingers -had never recovered their shape from the chilblains of -the Baltic, dangling limply down at either side of him, -and perhaps tears in his round china-blue eyes.</p> - -<p>Then at last Concha and Rory were running and -ducking and laughing under a shower of rice, and rose -leaves. They looked very young and frail, both of them, -blown out into the world, where God knew what awaited -them.</p> - -<p>“They are like Paulo and Francesca—two leaves -clinging together, blown by the wind,” said Jollypot -dreamily to Teresa.</p> - -<h3>5</h3> - -<p>We have already likened a wedding to a fall of snow; -and as rapidly as a fall of snow it melts, disclosing -underneath it just such a dingy world.</p> - -<p>One by one the motley company drifted off in trains, -and motors, their exit producing on Teresa the same -impression that she always got from the end of <i>Twelfth -Night</i>—that of a troupe of fairy mimes, laden with -their tiffany, their pasteboard yew hedges, their stucco -peacocks, slowly sailing away in a cloud out of sight, -while the clown whom they have forgotten, sits down<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212"></a>[212]</span> -here on the earth singing <i>the rain it raineth every -day</i>.</p> - -<p>But, in spite of a dismantled drawing-room, a billiard-table -covered with presents, a trampled lawn and a -furious Parker and Rudge, life quickly re-adjusted itself.</p> - -<p>The next day but one there was a rose show in -the county town, and Rudge went to see it.</p> - -<p>After dinner, Dick had him summoned to the drawing-room -to discuss the roses with himself and the Doña.</p> - -<p>His leathery cheeks were flushed, his hard eyes shone: -“Oh ... it was grand, ma’am. I was saying to Mrs. -Rudge, ‘Well, I said, one doesn’t often see a sight like -that!’ I said. There was a new white rose, sir, well, -I’ve never seen anything to beat it....”</p> - -<p>“And what about the <i>Daily Clarion</i> rose?”</p> - -<p>“Well, sir, a very fine rose, certainly, but I’m not -sure if it would do with us ... but that white rose, -sir, I said to Mrs. Rudge, ‘you could almost say it was -like the moon,’ I said.”</p> - -<p class="tb">And what was Time but a gigantic rose, shedding, -one by one, its petals? And then Jollypot gathered -them up and made them into <i>pot-pourri</i>; but still the -petals went on falling, silently, ceaselessly.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213"></a>[213]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</h2> - -</div> - -<h3>1</h3> - -<p>That year there was a marvellous harvest, and by -the end of July the sun had burned the wheat into the -very quintessence of gold, and every evening for a few -moments the reflection of its dying rays transfigured -it into a vision, so glorious, so radiant, that -Dick, looking up from his fish, would exclaim -to the dinner-table, “Good God! Look at the -wheat!”</p> - -<p>Thus must the memory of the corn of Cana, sown -with symbols, heavy with memories and legends, -radiant with gleams caught from the Golden City in -the skies, have appeared to St. John dying in the -desert.</p> - -<p>Teresa, having, during her walks in the view, noticed -a field of wheat from which a segment had already -been cut, so that, with the foil of the flat earth beside -it, she was able to see the whole depth of the crop, -carried away an impression of the greater thickness -of wheat-fields as compared to those containing the -other crops; and this impression—strengthened by -the stronger colouring of the wheat, for to the memory -quality is often indistinguishable from quantity—lingering -with her after she had got back to Plasencia, -whence the view always appeared <i>pintado</i>, a picture, -gave her the delusion of appreciating the actual <i>paint</i>, -not merely as a medium of representation, but as a -beautiful substance in itself; as one appreciates it in -a Monet or a Monticelli.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214"></a>[214]</span></p> - -<p>And all the time, silently, imperceptibly, like the -processes of nature, the work of harvest was transforming -the picture, till by the end of the first week -in August many of the planes of unbroken colour -had been dotted into shocks or garnered into ricks. -The only visible agent of this transformation was an -occasional desultory wain with a green tarpaulin tilt, -meandering through the silent fields. Its progress -through, and its relation to, or, rather, its lack of -relation to, the motionless view gave Teresa an almost -eerie sense of incongruity, and made her think of a -vase of crimson roses she had sat gazing at one night -in the drawing-room. The light of the lamp behind -it had changed the substance of the roses into something -so translucent that they seemed to be made of -a fluid or of light. A tiny insect was creeping in and -out among their petals, and as she watched it she -had a sense of being mentally out of gear in that she -could see simultaneously phenomena belonging to such -different planes of consciousness as these static phantom -flames and that restless creature of the earth—they -themselves, at any rate, could neither feel or see each -other.</p> - -<p>Then they all went away—the Doña and Dick to -join Hugh Mallam at Harlech, Jollypot to a sister in -Devonshire, and Teresa to Cambridge to stay with -Harry Sinclair.</p> - -<p>The year began to pay the penalty of its magnificence; -for “violent fires soon burn out themselves”; and -Teresa, walking down the Backs, or punting up to -Byron’s pool, or bicycling among the lovely Cambridgeshire -villages, saw everywhere signs of the -approach of autumn in reddening leaves and reddening -fruits, and there kept running in her head lines from a -poem of Herrick’s on <i>Lovers How They Come and -Part</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215"></a>[215]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">They tread on clouds, and though they sometimes fall,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They fall like dew, and make no noise at all.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So silently they one to th’other come</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As colours steale into the Pear or Plum.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>While she was there she met Haines (the man who -ran the pastoral players). He had heard of her play -from Guy, and was so importunate in his requests to -be allowed to read it that she finally gave it to him.</p> - -<p>Guy had been right—the need to publish or produce -was biological: useless to fight against.</p> - -<p>Haines liked it, and wanted to set his company working -at it at once.</p> - -<p>As one hypnotised, she agreed to all of his suggestions: -“Cust says you have a lawn with a view which would -make an excellent natural background ... I believe -it would be the very thing. It’s a piece that needs very -few properties—some cardboard trees for the orchard, -a few bottles and phials for Trotaconventos’s house, and -an altar to give the effect of a chapel in the last scene -... yes, it should be very nice on your lawn, I think -folk will like it.”</p> - -<p>Did he say <i>folk</i>? But, of course, it would obviously -be a favourite word of his.</p> - -<p class="tb">So, <i>Folk</i> were to take a hand—<i>Folk</i> were to spring -up like mushrooms on the lawn of Plasencia, and embody -her dreams!</p> - -<p>A little shiver went down her spine.</p> - -<p>“I am a fool, I am a fool, I am a fool,” she muttered.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216"></a>[216]</span></p> - -<h3>2</h3> - -<p>They all came back to Plasencia at the beginning of -September.</p> - -<p>The Doña received the plan of the play’s being acted -on her lawn with indulgent indifference; ever since -they had been quite little her children had periodically -organised dramatic performances. “Mrs. Moore can -bring her Women’s Institute to watch it, and that should -leave me in peace for this year, at any rate. I suppose -we’d better have the county too, though we <i>did</i> give -them cakes and ices enough at Concha’s wedding to -last them their lifetime. What is this play of yours -about, Teresa?”</p> - -<p>“Oh ... old Seville,” she answered nervously, “a -nunnery ... and ... and ... there’s a knight ... -and there’s an old sort of ... sort of witch.”</p> - -<p>“Aha! an old gipsy. And does she give the girls -love potions?” And the Doña, her head a little on -one side, contemplated her, idly quizzical.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I daresay she does,” and Teresa gave a nervous -laugh, “it’s an <i>auto sacramentál</i>,” she added.</p> - -<p>The Doña looked interested: “An <i>auto sacramentál</i>? -That’s what they used to play in the old days in the -Seville streets at Corpus Christi. Your great-grandmother -de La Torre saw one of the last they ever did,” -then she began to chuckle, “an <i>auto sacramentál</i> on an -English lawn! Poor Mrs. Moore and her Women’s -Institute! Still, it will be very good for them, I’m -sure.”</p> - -<p class="tb">Would she guess? She was horribly intelligent; but -not literary, so there was hope—and yet ... that -affective sensitiveness that, having taken the place for -centuries of education and intellection, has developed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217"></a>[217]</span> -in the women of Spain into what is almost a sixth -sense....</p> - -<p>Well, if she did guess it would be only what she knew -already, and if she chose to draw false conclusions—let -her!</p> - -<p>But would she recognise herself? The mere possibility -of this made Teresa blush crimson. But it was -not her fault; she had not meant to draw her like that—it -had grown on her hands.</p> - -<p>And then she thought no more about it, but wandered -through the garden and ripening orchard, muttering -absently:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So silently they one to th’other come,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As colours steale into the Pear or Plum.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<h3>3</h3> - -<p>After what seemed an interminable correspondence -with Haines, it was settled that he should bring his -company to act the play at the end of September. -Teresa had tried hard to make the date an earlier or a -later one; but it was not to be ... and perhaps ... -who could tell?</p> - -<p>Mrs. Moore was delighted that her Institute was to -see a play about old Spain, and was sure that it would -be most educative.</p> - -<p>The idea of its being played before Mrs. Moore -and a Women’s Institute amused Teresa; after all -it was none of her doing, and she liked watching life -when it was left free to arrange its own humorous -combinations.</p> - -<p>Concha and Rory, Arnold, Harry Sinclair, and Guy, -all came to stay at Plasencia to see it; and two<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218"></a>[218]</span> -days before the performance a telegram came from -David, asking if they could put him up for a few -nights.</p> - -<p>The Doña frowned as she read it, and Guy looked at -Teresa; but Concha and Rory begged that room might -be made for him, “It will be his last beano, poor -creature,” they said.</p> - -<p>Well, if it was to be, it was to be. Once one ceases -to strain against the chain of events, the peace of -numbness creeps over one’s weary limbs, and anyway -... perhaps....</p> - -<p class="tb">The day of the performance arrived; it was to begin -at two o’clock.</p> - -<p>All morning Teresa was busy with preparations; she -could not help being amused by the tremendous importance -that everything concerning it had for Haines—it -was like Parker, who seemed to think the world should -stop moving during the fitting-on in the sewing-room of -a new blouse.</p> - -<p>No one had time to go in the car to meet David; and -they had already begun luncheon when he arrived. All -the actors were there, so it was a large party, and he sat -down on the Doña’s left hand, far away from Teresa. -She noticed that he ate practically nothing. He looked -much stronger than in the spring, and his expression -was almost buoyant.</p> - -<p>Before the audience arrived, and when the actors -were dressing in the two tents pitched on the lawn, they -got a few words together.</p> - -<p>“I’ve come,” he said, smiling.</p> - -<p>“Yes ... you’ve come,” she answered.</p> - -<p>“So you’ve been writing a play—‘a chiel amang us -takin’ notes’!” and he smiled down on her.</p> - -<p>Then Mrs. Moore came bustling across the lawn, -shepherding her Institute, a score of working women<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219"></a>[219]</span> -in their Sunday finery, many of them carrying -babies.</p> - -<p>“How do you do, Teresa, what a glorious day! I -saw dear Concha in church on Sunday; looking so -bonny. It must be delightful having her back again. -Well, this is a great surprise; we didn’t know you were -an author; did we, Mrs. Bolton? We didn’t know Miss -Lane wrote; did we? Well, we’re all very much looking -forward to it; aren’t we, Mrs. Hedges? I don’t expect -you’ve seen many plays before.”</p> - -<p>“I saw <i>East Lynne</i> when I was in service in Bedford,” -said one woman proudly.</p> - -<p>“I’ve seen that on the pictures,” said another.</p> - -<p>Then the “gentry” began to arrive: “<i>What</i> a day -for your play!” “Oh, what a <i>sight</i> your Michaelmas -daisies are! It really is a perfect setting for a pastoral -play,” “Are there to be any country dances?” “Ah! -<i>you</i> have that single rose too ... it certainly is very -decorative, but I thought Mr. Lane said ... ah! -there he is, in flannels, wise man!” “Ah, there’s -Mistress Concha, looking about sixteen, dear thing!—” -“I do think it’s a splendid idea having the Institute -women—it’s so good for them, this sort of -thing.”</p> - -<p>Then fantastic figures began to dart in and out of the -two tents: a knight in pasteboard armour, a red cross -painted on his shield, a friar with glimpses of scarlet -hose under his habit—all of them “holy people of God,” -all of them dead hundreds of years ago ... <i>Folk</i>, -unmistakably <i>Folk</i>.</p> - -<p>Soon the audience was seated; the chattering ceased, -and the play began.</p> - -<p>This was the play:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220"></a>[220]</span></p> - -<h3>THE KEY<br /> -<span class="smaller">AN AUTO SACRAMENTÁL</span></h3> - -<p class="center"><i>Scene: Seville. Time: The Reign of Pedro the Cruel.</i></p> - -<h4>DRAMATIS PERSONÆ</h4> - -<table summary="DRAMATIS PERSONÆ"> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span></td> - <td>⎞</td> - <td rowspan="2" class="valign"><i>Nuns of the Convent of San Miguel.</i></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span></td> - <td>⎠</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="3">Four other Nuns of the Convent of San Miguel.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span></td> - <td></td> - <td><i>a Procuress.</i></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Don Manuel de Lara</span></td> - <td></td> - <td><i>a Knight.</i></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Dennys</span></td> - <td></td> - <td><i>a French “Trovar.”</i></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span></td> - <td></td> - <td><i>Confessor to the Nuns of San Miguel.</i></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Don Salomon</span></td> - <td></td> - <td><i>a Jewish Doctor.</i></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Pepita</span></td> - <td>⎞</td> - <td rowspan="2" class="valign"><i>Two Children.</i></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Juanito</span></td> - <td>⎠</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Sancho</span></td> - <td>⎞</td> - <td rowspan="3" class="valign"><i>Alguaciles.</i></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Domingo</span></td> - <td>⎟</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Pedro</span></td> - <td>⎠</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Ghost of Don Juan Tenorio.</span></td> - <td></td> - <td></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Ghost of Sister Isabel.</span></td> - <td></td> - <td></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Zuleica</span></td> - <td></td> - <td><i>a Moorish Slave.</i></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221"></a>[221]</span></p> - -<h4>ACT I</h4> - -<h5>SCENE I</h5> - -<div class="scene"> - -<p><i>The court of the Convent of San Miguel: its floor -is diapered with brightly-coloured tiles; in its centre -is a fountain, round which are set painted pots of -sweet basil, myrtle, etc., its walls are decorated with -arabesques and mottoes in Arabic characters; against -one wall is a little shrine containing a wooden virgin. -<span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> is reading aloud from “Amadis -de Gaul” to four nuns who are sitting round on rugs -embroidering. A Moorish slave is keeping the flies -from them with a large fan.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>reads</i>): The hand then drew her -in, and she was as joyful as though the whole world -had been given her, not so much for the prize of -beauty, which had been won, as that she had thus -proved herself the worthy mate of Amadis, having, like -him, entered the forbidden chamber, and deprived all -others of the hope of that glory.</p> - -<p>(<i>Lays down the book</i>): Well, and so that is the end of -the fair Lady Oriana.</p> - -<p><i>First Nun</i> (<i>with a giggle</i>): Has any one yet put this -reading of Amadis into their confession?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: More fool they then if they have; -we may confess it now that we have reached the -colophon. Better absolution for a sheep than a lamb. -(<i>They laugh</i>).</p> - -<p><i>Second Nun</i>: Ah, well, ’tis but a venial sin, and when -one thinks....</p> - -<p><i>Third Nun</i>: Ay, praise be to heaven for the humours -that swell old abbesses’ legs and make them keep a-bed!</p> - -<p><i>First Nun</i>: Truly, since she took to her bed, there<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222"></a>[222]</span> -have been fine doings in this house—it was but yesterday -that we were reckoning that it must be close on five -months since the Prioress has kept frater.</p> - -<p><i>Third Nun</i>: And Zuleica there, sent all through -Lent to the <i>Morería</i><a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> or the Jews’ butcher for red -meat ... and she was swearing it was all for her ape -Gerinaldo!</p> - -<p><i>First Nun</i>: Yes, and the other night I could have -sworn I heard the strains of a Moorish zither coming -from her room and the tapping heels of a <i>juglaresa</i>.</p> - -<p><i>Fourth Nun</i> (<i>with a sigh</i>): This house has never been -the same since the sad fall of Sister Isabel.</p> - -<p><i>First Nun</i>: Ay, that must have been a rare time! -Two brats, I think?</p> - -<p><i>Second Nun</i>: And they say her lying in was in the -house of Trotaconventos.</p> - -<p><i>Third Nun</i>: Ah, well, as the common folk, and (<i>with -rather a spiteful smile</i>) our dear Sister Assumcion would -say: Who sleeps with dogs rises with fleas—and if we -sin venially, why, the only wonder is that ’tis not -mortally.</p> - -<p><i>Second Nun</i>: Be that as it may, if rumours reach the -ears of the Archbishop there’ll be a rare shower of -penances at the next visitation. Why, the house will -echo for weeks to the mournful strains of <i>Placebo</i> and -<i>Dirige</i>, and there will be few of us, I fear, who will not -forfeit our black veils for a season.</p> - -<p><i>Fourth Nun</i>: There is one will keep her black veil -for the honour of the house.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>scornfully</i>): Aye, winds strong -enough to level the Giralda could not blow off the black -veil of Sister Pilar.</p> - -<p><i>Third Nun</i>: And yet ... she is a Guzman, and the -streets are bloody from their swords; they are a wild -crew.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223"></a>[223]</span></p> - -<p><i>Fourth Nun</i>: Yes, but a holy one—St. Dominic was -a Guzman.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>mockingly</i>): St. Martin! To the -rescue of your little bird!... as the common folk -and (<i>with an ironical bow to the third nun</i>) Sister Assumcion -would say.</p> - -<p><i>First Nun</i>: What’s that?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Why, it is but a little story that I -sometimes think of when I look at Sister Pilar.</p> - -<p><i>Second Nun</i>: Let’s hear the story.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Well, they say that one hot day -a little martin perched on the ground under a tree, and, -spreading out his wings and ruffling his little feathers, -as proud as any canon’s lady at a procession in Holy -Week, he piped out: Were the sky to fall I could hold -it up on my wings! And at that very moment a leaf -from the tree dropped on to his head, and so scared -the poor little bird that he was all of a tremble, and he -spread his wings and away he flew, crying: St. Martin! -To the rescue of your little bird! And that is what we -say in the country when folks carry their heads higher -than their neighbours. (<i>They laugh.</i>)</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p>(<i>Pause.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Second Nun</i>: And yet has she kindly motions. Do -you remember when the little novice Ines was crying -her eyes out because she had not the wherewithal to -buy her habit, and thought to die with shame in that -she would need have to make her profession by pittances? -Well, and what must Sister Pilar do but go -to the friend of Ines, little Maria Desquivel, whose -father, they say, is one of the richest merchants in -Seville, feigning that for the good of her soul she would -fain consecrate a purse of money, and some sundries -bequeathed her by an aunt, to the profession of two<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224"></a>[224]</span> -novices, and said that she would take it very kind if -Maria and Ines would be these two. And so little Ines -was furnished out with habit, and feather-bed, and -quilt all powdered with stags’ heads and roses, and a -coffer of painted leather, and a dozen spoons, and a -Dominican friar to preach the sermon at her profession, -without expending one blush of shame; in that she -shared the debt with her rich friend. And then, too, -with children she is wonderfully tender.</p> - -<p><i>Fourth Nun</i> (<i>with a little shiver</i>): But that cold gray -eye like glass! I verily believe her thoughts are all -... for the last things.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> gives a little snort. Silence. -<span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> comes out of the convent behind -the group of nuns, and approaches them unobserved.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Fourth Nun</i> (<i>musing</i>): And yet, that book, by a monk -long dead, about the miracles of Our Lady ... it -shows her wondrous lenient to sin, let but the sinners -be loud enough in her praise ... there was the thief -she saved from the gallows because he had said so many -Aves.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: But <i>he</i> was not in religion.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p>(<i>They all give starts of surprise.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Second Nun</i>: Jesus! How you startled me!</p> - -<p><i>Third Nun</i>: I verily believe you carry a heliotrope -and walk invisible.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>a note of nervousness perceptible -through the insolence of her voice</i>): And are those in -religion to have, forsooth, a smaller share in the spiritual -treasure of the Church than thieves?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> sits down without answering.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225"></a>[225]</span></p> - -<p><i>Second Nun</i> (<i>smiling</i>): Well?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: They say there was once a giant, so -strong that he could have lifted the Sierra Morena and -placed them on the Pyrenees, but one day he happened -on a little stone no bigger than my nail, but so firmly -was it embedded in the ground that all his mighty -strength availed him nothing to make it budge an -inch.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: And that little stone is the sin of -a religious?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>with a shrug</i>): Give it whatever meaning -tallies with your humour. (<i>She opens a book and begins -to read it.</i>)</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>yawning</i>): I’m hungry. Shall I -send Zuleica to beg some marzipan from the Cellaress, or -shall I possess my soul and belly in patience until -dinner-time?</p> - -<p><i>First Nun</i> (<i>jocosely</i>): For shame! Gluttony is one -of the deadly sins, is it not, Sister Pilar?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> keeps her eyes fixed on her book without -answering. <span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span> enters by door to -left. Flutter among nuns.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Christ and His Mother be with -you, my daughters. (<i>Sits down and mops his brow.</i>) -’Tis wondrous cool and pleasant in your court. (<i>He -gives a shy glance at <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span>, but she continues -to keep her eyes on her book. Turns to fourth nun.</i>) -Well, daughter, and what of the cope you promised -me?</p> - -<p><i>Second Nun</i> (<i>holding up her embroidery</i>): See! It -wants but three more roses and one swan.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>with another glance in the direction of</i> -<span class="smcap">Sister Pilar)</span>: And do you know of what the swan is -the figure? In that, flying from man, it makes its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226"></a>[226]</span> -dwelling in wild, solitary haunts, St. Gregory of -Nazianus holds that it figures the anchorite, and -truly....</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>suddenly looking up, and smiling a little</i>): -But what of its love of the lyre and all secular songs, -by which it is wont to be lured to its destruction from -its most secret glens? I have read that this same -failing has led some learned doctors to look upon it -as a figure of the soul of man, drawn hither and thither -by the love of vain things.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>up to now he has spoken in a mincing, -self-conscious voice, but from this point on his voice is -shrill and excited</i>): Yes, yes, but that can also be -interpreted as the love of godly men for sermons and -edification and grave seemly discourse on the beautitudes -of eternal life, and the holy deeds of men and women -long since departed....</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: The love, in short, of such discourse -as yours, father? (<i>She tries in vain to catch -<span class="smcap">Sister Pilar’s</span> eye and wink at her.</i>)</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>pouting like a cross child</i>, sotto voce): -Honey is not for the mouth of the ass.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Well, when you joined us, we were -in the midst of just such a discourse. ’Twas touching -the sin of a religious, which Sister Pilar was likening -to a stone of small dimensions, but so heavy that a -mighty giant could not move it.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>turning eagerly to <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span></i>): -Where did you read that <i>exemplum</i>, daughter? I have -not come upon it.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Sister Assumcion has drawn her own -meaning from a little foolish tale. She must surely be -fresh from pondering the Fathers that she is so quick -to find spiritual significations. Is that volume lying -by you (<i>pointing to “Amadis”</i>) one of the works of the -Fathers, sister?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227"></a>[227]</span></p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>staring at her insolently</i>): No, -Sister, it is not.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>The other nuns titter.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Well, ’tis doubtless true that a -little sin shows blacker on the soul of a religious than a -great sin on a layman’s soul ... but when it comes to -the weighing in the ghostly scales, a religious has very -heavy things to throw into the balance—Aves and -Paters, though made of nought but air, are heavy things. -Then, there is the nourishment of Christ’s body every -day, making our souls wax fat, and—and—(<i>impatiently</i>) -oh, all the benefits of a religious weigh heavily. The -religious, like a peasant, has a treasure hid ’neath his -bed that will for ever keep the wolf from the door. -(<i>Looks round to see if his conceit is appreciated.</i>) In -Bestiaries, the wolf, you know, is a figure of the -devil.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Enter from behind <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span>, carrying a -pedlar’s pack. Throughout the play she is dressed -in scarlet.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>in unctuous, mocking voice</i>): Six hens -to one cock! I verily believe that was the sight that -made Adam weary in Eden. Holy hens and reverend -cock, I bid you good morrow. (<i>She catches <span class="smcap">Sister -Assumcion’s</span> eye and gives a little nod.</i>)</p> - -<p><i>The Nuns in chorus</i>: Why, ’tis our good friend -Trotaconventos!</p> - -<p><i>First Nun</i>: For shame! You have sorely neglected -San Miguel these last days. What news in the town?</p> - -<p><i>Third Nun</i>: I hear the Ponces gave a tournament -and bull-fight to celebrate a daughter’s wedding, and -that the bridegroom was gored by the bull and the -leeches despair of his recovery—is’t true?</p> - -<p><i>Second Nun</i>: What is the latest Moorish song?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228"></a>[228]</span></p> - -<p><i>First Nun</i>: Have you been of late to the Alcazar? -You promised to note for me if Doña Maria wore her -gown cut square or in a peak?</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>covering her ears with her hands</i>): -Good ladies, you’ll have me deaf. And do you not -think shame to ask about such worldly matters before -your confessor, there ... and before Sister Pilar? -(<i>turning to <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span></i>). Well, lady, and have the -wings sprouted yet? But bear in mind the proverb -that says, the ant grew wings to its hurt; and why? -Because it took to flying and fell a prey to the birds.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>The nuns exchange glances and giggle. <span class="smcap">Sister -Pilar</span> looks at her with cold disgust.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Truly, you are as well stocked with -proverbs and fables as our sister Assumcion. <i>You</i>, -doubtless, collect them at fairs and peasants’ weddings, -but ... (<i>she breaks off suddenly, bites her lip, colours, -and takes up her book</i>).</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Ah, well, wisdom can walk in a homespun -jerkin as well as in the purple of King Solomon, -eh, Don priest? And as to Sister Assumcion, what if -her speech be freckled with a few wholesome, sun-ripened -proverbs? They will not show on her pretty -face when the nuns of Seville meet the nuns of Toledo -in the contest of beauty, eh, my pretty? (<i><span class="smcap">Sister -Assumcion</span> laughs and tosses her head.</i>) But the reverend -chaplain is looking sourly! It is rare for Trotaconventos -to meet with sour looks from the cloth. Why, -there is not a canon’s house in <i>los Abades</i> that does not -sweetly stink of my perfumes: storax, benjamin, gum, -amber, civet, musk, mosqueta. For do they not say -that holiness and sweet odours are the same? It was -Don Miguel de Caceres—that stout, well-liking canon, -God rest his soul, who lived in the house the choir-master<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229"></a>[229]</span> -has now—and I used to keep his old shaven face as -soft for him as a ripe fig, and I saw to it that he could -drink his pig-skin a day without souring his breath; -well, he used to call me ‘the panther’ of Seville; for -it seems the panther is as many-hued as the peacock, -and the other beasts follow it to their destruction -because of the sweet odours it exudes. And there -were words from Holy Writ he would quote about me—<i>in -odorcur</i> or words to that effect. Nor were the -other branches....</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>who had been fidgeting with impatience -at <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos’s</span> verbosity, as usual shrilly -and excitedly</i>): Doubtless the words quoted by the late -canon were, <i>in odore unguentorum tuorum curremus</i>—in -the track of thy perfumes shall we run. They come -in the Song of Songs, the holy <i>redondilla</i> wherewith -Christ Jesus serenades Holy Church, and truly....</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>calmly ironical</i>): Truly, Don Jaime, -you are a learned clerk. But as I was saying, it is not -only for my perfumes that they seek me in <i>los Abades</i>. -Don Canon is wont to have a large paunch, and Trotaconventos -was not always as stout as she is now ... there -were doors through which I could glide, while -Don Canon’s bulk, for all his puffing and squeezing, -must stand outside in the street. So in would go -Trotaconventos, as easily as though it were your convent, -ladies, her wallet stuffed with <i>redondillas</i> and <i>coplas</i>, -and all the other learned ballads wherein clerks are -wont to rhyme their sighs and tears and winks and -leers, and thrown in with these were toys of my own -devising—tiring-pins of silver-gilt, barred belts, slashed -shoes, kirtles laced with silk, lotions against freckles -and warts and women’s colics....</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>The nuns, except <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span>, who is apparently -absorbed in her reading, are drinking in every word<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230"></a>[230]</span> -with evident amusement and delight, <span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span> -grows every moment more impatient and bored.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Er—er—the Roman dame, Cleopatra, -the leman of Mark Antony, was also learned in -such matters; she wrote a book on freckles and their -cure and....</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: I do not doubt it, Don Jaime. Well, -in would go Trotaconventos, and round her would -flock the pretty little uncoiffed maids, like the doves in -the Cathedral garden when one has crumbs in one’s -wallet. And I would feed them with marzipan and -deck them out with my trinkets, and then they would -sigh and say it was poor cheer going always with eyes -cast on the ground and dressed as soberly as a nun -(<i>she winks at the Nuns</i>) when they had chest upon -chest packed as close as pears in a basket with scarlet -clothes from Bruges and Malines, and gowns of Segovian -cloth and Persian samite, and bandequins from Bagdad, -all stiff with gold and pearls and broidered stories, rich -as the shroud of St. Ferdinand or the banners of the -King of Granada, lying there to fatten the moths till -their parents should get them a husband. And I -would say, ‘Well, when the dog put on velvet breeches -he was as good as his master. There’s none to see but -old Trotaconventos, and <i>she</i> won’t blab. I’d like to -see how this becomes you, and this ... and this.’ -And I would have them decked out as gay and fine as -a fairy, and they strutting before the mirror and laughing -and blushing and taking heart of grace. Then my -hand would go up their petticoats, and they would -scream, ‘Ai! ai! Trotaconventos, you are tickling -me!’ and laugh like a child of seven. And I would -say, ‘Ah, my sweeting, there is one could tickle you -better than me.’ And so I would begin Don Canon’s -suit. Ay, and I would keep him posted in her doings,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231"></a>[231]</span> -telling him at what procession she would be at, or in -what church she would hear ‘cock’s mass.’ Or, if it -was to a pretty widow his fancy roved, it was I that -could tell him which days she was due at the church-yard -to pray at her husband’s grave ... aye, as the -proverb says, when the broom sprouts the ass is born -to eat it.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>with a malicious glance at <span class="smcap">Jaime -Rodriguez</span></i>): But another proverb says: Honey is not -for the mouth of the ass.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>with a wink</i>): And yet another says: -Honey lies hid in rocks; and it was not only to the houses -of lords and merchants that I went on Don Canon’s -business. How did I win my name of Trotaconventos? -It was not given me by my gossips at the font. I was -not taught in my catechism that on the seventh day -God created man and woman, and on the eighth day -He created monks and nuns ... were you so taught, -Sister Pilar?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span>, with a petulant sigh, gets up and -goes and examines the arabesques on one of the walls.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>looking up from her book, her eye sparkling -and her cheek flushing</i>): As to that ... I have seen a -painted Bible wherein the Serpent of Eden is depicted -with a wicked old woman’s face.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span> turns round with a shrill cackle.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>chuckling</i>): A good, honest blow, -Sister Pilar! But as the proverb says, the abbot dines -off his singing, and of its own accord the pot does not -fill itself with stew. Howbeit, Sister Pilar, who laughs -last laughs on the right side of his mouth. Well, -ladies, shall we to the parlour? A ship from Tunis -has lately come in, and one from Alexandria, and one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232"></a>[232]</span> -from Genoa, and they tell me I was born under Liber -with the moon in the ascendant, and that draws me -ever to the water’s edge, and sailors have merry kind -hearts and bring me toys, and, it may be, there will be -that among them that will take your fancy.</p> - -<p><i>First Nun</i>: We have been burning to know what was -hid in your pack to-day.</p> - -<p><i>Third and Second Nun</i>: To the parlour! To the -parlour!</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>All except <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> and <span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span> -walk towards the convent. <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> goes on -reading. <span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span> comes up to her and -timidly sits down beside her. Silence.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>in a constrained voice</i>): I am to read -mass to the pilgrims before they start for Guadalupe.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>absently</i>): I should like to go on pilgrimage.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Perhaps ... if ... why do -you never go then?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>smiling a little sadly</i>): Because I want -to keep my own dream of a pilgrimage—nothing but -mountains and rivers and seas and visions and hymns -to Our Lady.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: I fear there are other things as -well: fleas and dust, and tumblers and singers, and -unseemly talk.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Hence I’d liefer go on pilgrimage by -the road of my own dreams. (<i>Passionately</i>) Oh, these -other things, small and pullulating and fertile, and all of -them the spawn of sin! One cannot be rid of them. -Why, even in the Books of Hours, round the grave Latin -psalms the monks must needs draw garlands and -butterflies and hawks and hounds; and we nuns -powder our handiwork—the copes and vestments for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233"></a>[233]</span> -the mass—not with such meet signs as crosses and -emmies, but with swans and true-love knots and birds -and butterflies ... (<i>she breaks off, half laughing</i>). I -would have things plain and grave.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>impatiently</i>): Yes, yes, but you -are forgetting that Nature is the mirror in which is -reflected the thoughts of God; hence, to the discerning -eye, there is nothing mean and trivial, but everything, -everything, is a page in the great book of the Passion -and the Redemption. For him who has learned to -read that book, the Martyrs bleed in roses and in amethysts, -the Confessors keep their council in violets, and -in lilies the Virgins are spotless—not a spray of eglantine, -not a little ant, but is a character in the book of -Nature. Why, without first reading it, the holy -fathers could not crack a little nut; it is the figure of -Christ, said Adam of Saint-Victor—its green husk is -His humanity, its shell the wood of the Cross, its kernel -the heavenly nourishment of the Host. Nay, daughter, -I tell you....</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Yes, yes, but do you verily believe the -nun with her needle, the clerk with his brush, wots -anything of these hidden matters? Nay, it is nought -but vanity. Oh! these multitudinous seeds of vanity -that lie broadcast in every soul, in every mote of sunshine, -in every acre of the earth! There is no soul -built of a substance so closely knit but that it has -crannies wherein these seeds find lodging; and, ere -you can say a pater, lo! they are bourgeoning! ’Tis -like some church that stands four-square to the winds -and sun so long as folk flock there to pray; then comes -a rumour that the Moors are near, and the folks leave -their homes and fly; and then, some day, they may -return, and they will find the stout walls of their church -all starred with jessamine, intagliated with ivy, that -eat and eat until it crumbles to the ground. So many<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234"></a>[234]</span> -<i>little</i> things ... everywhere! And our thoughts ... -say it be the Passion of Our Lord we choose for contemplation; -at first, all is well, the tears flow, ’tis -almost as if we smelled the sweat and dust of the road -to Calvary ... and then, after a little space, we -stare around bewildered, and know that our minds -have broken into scores of little bright thoughts, like -the margins of the Hours, and then ...</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Yes, daughter, but I tell you you -should obtain the key to the Creation; read St. Ambrose’s -<i>Hexæmeron</i>, and thus school your mind by -figures for the naked types of Heaven; there every -house will be a church, its hearth an altar on which, no -longer hid under the species of bread and wine, Jesus -Christ will be for ever enthroned. And its roof will be -supported not by pillars carved into the semblance of -the Patriarchs and Apostles, but by the Patriarchs ... -oh, yes, and the housewife’s store of linen will all be -corporals, and her plate ... you are smiling!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: How happy you must have been playing -with your toys when you were a child! I can see you -with an old wine-keg for an altar, a Moor’s skull for a -chalice, and a mule’s discarded shoe for a pyx, chanting -meaningless words, and rating the other children if -their wits wandered ... but ... you are angry?</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>rising in high dudgeon</i>): Aye, ever -mocking! Methinks ... I cannot call to mind ever -reading that holy women of old mocked their confessors.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>He walks across the court to the door at the side. -<span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> sits on for some minutes in a reverie, -then rises, and goes and tends the plants round the -fountain, so that she is not visible to any one entering -the court from the convent. Enter from the convent -<span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span> and <span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span>.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235"></a>[235]</span></p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: As to hell-fire, my dear, you’ll meet -with many a procuress and bawd in Paradise, for we -have a mighty advocate in St. Mary Magdalene, who -was of our craft. And as to the holy life, why, when -your hams begin to wither and your breasts to sag, -then cast up your eyes and draw as long an upper lip -as a prioress at a bishop’s visitation. A sinful youth -and a holy old age—thus do we both enjoy the earth -and win to Paradise hereafter. Well, my sweeting, all -is in train—I’d eat some honey, it softens the voice; -and repeat the <i>in Temerate</i> and the <i>De Profundis</i>, for -old wives say they are wonderful lucky prayers in all -such business, and ... well, I think that is all. Be -down at the orchard wall at nine o’clock to-night, -and trust the rest to what the Moors call the ‘great -procuress’—Night.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Exit <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span>. <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> appears -from behind the fountain. She and <span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> -stare at each other in silence for a few -seconds, <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> coldly, <span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> -defiantly.</i></p> - -</div> - -<h5>SCENE II</h5> - -<div class="scene"> - -<p><i>Scene the same. Time: Afternoon of the same day. -<span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> is hearing <span class="smcap">Juanito’s</span> and <span class="smcap">Pepita’s</span> -lessons.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: Says St. John the Evangelist:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">In Jesus Christ I do believe,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In guise of bread we Him perceive,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The Father’s side he ne’er does leave Son Eternal.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236"></a>[236]</span></p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Says St. Philip:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Down into Hell he did descend</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The gates of which....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span>: No, no, Juanito. That does not come -for a long time.</p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: I remember; let <i>me</i> say.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Says St. James:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The Holy Ghost did Him conceive——</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: ’Tis my part she is saying—’tis my part.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Says St. James ... oh, I can’t remember!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>May we go on to the Seven Deadly Sins? I like -them much the best.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Beware of Lust—King David once....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Juanito, dear, you must not look upon -this exercise as a game. It is the doctrine of Holy -Mother Church. It is your pilgrim’s staff and not a -light matter. Let us begin again.</p> - -<p><i>Juanita</i>: Oh, I am so weary! The sun’s so hot. -My head seems as if to-day it could not hold Creeds and -such matters. Prithee, Sister Pilar, will you not read -to us?</p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: Yes! Yes! From the Chronicle of Saint -Ferdinand.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Oh, children, you have been at your -tasks scarce quarter of an hour.</p> - -<p><i>Children</i>: Prithee, dear Sister Pilar! We were both -bled this morning.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I fear I am a fond and foolish master. -Well, so be it. (<i>She opens a large folio.</i>) Let me -see....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237"></a>[237]</span></p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: ’Twas at the fall of Seville that you left off -yesterday.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Yes, and that old Moor had yielded up -the keys.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: This is the place. “Now one of the -keys was of so pure a silver that it seemed to be white, -and in places it was gilded, and it was of a very notable -and exquisite workmanship. In length it was the third -of a cubit. Its stem was hollow and delicately turned, -and it ended in a ball inlaid with divers metals. Round -its guards in curious characters was engraved: God -will open, the King will enter. The circle of its ring -contained an engraved plaque like to a medal, embossed -with flowers and leaves. And in the centre of the hole -was a little plaque threaded with a delicately twisted -cord, and the ring was joined to the stem by a cube of -gold on the four sides of which were embossed alternately -lions and castles. And on the edge of its bulk, -between delicately inlaid arabesques, there was written, -in Hebrew words and Hebrew characters, the same -motto as that on the guards, which is in Latin—‘Rex -Regium aperiet: Rex universæ terræ introibit’—the -King of Kings will open, the King of all the earth -will enter. Some say the key and the whole -incident is a symbol of the Host being lain in the -custodia.”</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Oooh! It must have been a rare -fine key. When I’m a man, may I have such a -key?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I sadly fear, Juanito, that ’tis only to -saints that such keys are given. Think you, you’ll be -a saint some day?</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Not I! They live on lentils and dried -peas. I’ll be a tumbler at the fairs. Already I can -stand on my head ... (<i>catching Pepita’s eye</i>) -nearly.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238"></a>[238]</span></p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: Pooh! Any babe could stand on their head -if some one held their legs.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i> (<i>crestfallen and anxious to change the subject</i>): -Could St. Ferdinand stand on his head?</p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i> (<i>much shocked</i>): For shame, Juanito! Sister -Pilar has told us he was a great saint!</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: How great a one?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: A very great one.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: What did he do?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Well, he had a great devotion for Our -Lady and the Eucharist. He founded many convents -and monasteries....</p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: Did he found ours?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: It was founded during his reign.</p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: How long ago did he live?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: More than a hundred years ... when -your great-great-grandfather was living.</p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: There must have been many a nun lived here -since then!</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: How many? A hundred?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: More.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: A thousand?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Maybe.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: A million?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Nay, not quite a million.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Think you, they’d like to be alive again?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Ah! no.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Why?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Because either they are in Paradise or -will go there soon.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Do all nuns go to Paradise?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I ... er ... I hope so.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Will you go?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I hope so.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Will Sister Assumcion go?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I hope so.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239"></a>[239]</span></p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Juanito</span> is silent for a second or two, then he -begins to laugh.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: All those nuns, and when they die new ones -coming! Why, it’s like Don Juan Tenorio springing up -again in our game!</p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i> (<i>extremely shocked</i>): Oh, Juanito!</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Well, and so it is! And old Domingo says -that his ghost tries o’ nights to steal the live nuns, but -the dead ones beat him back.</p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: Yes, and it’s Don Juan that makes the -flowers and the corn grow, and that’s what the game is -that Domingo taught us.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Let me sing it!</p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: No, me!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Children! Children! This is all -foolish and evil talk. It is God, as you know well, that -makes the corn grow. You should not listen to old -Domingo.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Oh, but he tells us fine tales of Roland -and Belermo and the Moorish king that rode on a -zebra.... I like them better than the lives of the -Saints. Come, Pepita, let’s go and play.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>They pick up their balls and run off and begin -tossing them against one of the walls of the court.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>musing</i>): They too ... they too ... -pretty flowers and butterflies upon the margin of the -hours that catch one’s eye and fancy.... Pretty brats -of darkness ... and yet Juanito is only five and is -floating still, a little Moses, on the waters of Baptism. -Soft wax ... but where is the impress of the seal of -the King of Kings? He is a pigmy sinner, and albeit -the vanities pursued by him are tiny things—balls and -sweetmeats and pagan stories—still are they vanities,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240"></a>[240]</span> -and with his growth will they grow. Jesus! My -nightmare vision! Sin, sin, sin everywhere! Babes -turn hideous. Dead birds caught by the fowler and -turned into his deadliest snares. The fiends of hell -shrink to their stature and ape their innocence and -serious eyes; and how many virgins that the love of -no man could have lured, have, through longing -for children, been caught in concupiscence? Oh, -sin and works of darkness, I am so weary of -you!</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Beyond the wall a jovial male voice is heard -singing</i>:</p> - -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Derrière chez mon père</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Il est un bois taillis,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Serai-je nonnette, oui ou non?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Serai-je nonnette, je crois que non!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Le rossignol y chante,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et le jour et la nuit,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Il chante pour les filles</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qui n’ont pas d’ami.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Il ne chante pas pour moi</div> - <div class="verse indent0">J’en ai un, Dieu merci,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Serai-je nonnette, oui ou non?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Serai-je nonnette, je crois que non!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Enter <span class="smcap">Dennys</span>, disguised as a mendicant friar.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Christ, and His Mother, and all the Saints -be with you, daughter. Whew! Your porter’s a -lusty-sinewed rogue, and he was loath to let me enter, -saying that he and the maid he’s courting were locked -up in a church by one of my order and not let out till -he had paid toll of all that he had in his purse (<i>throws<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241"></a>[241]</span> -back his head and laughs</i>), and I asked him if the maid -lost something too, but....</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>very coldly</i>): What is your pleasure, -brother?</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: My pleasure? Need you ask that of a -mendicant friar? Why, my pleasure is the grease of -St. John of the golden beard, the good sweat of gold -coins—that is my pleasure. “Nothing for myself, yet -drop it into the sack,” as your proverb has it. And, in -truth, ’tis by the sweat of our brow that we, too, live; -oh, we are most learned and diligent advocates, and, -though we may skin our clients’ purses, down to robbing -them of their mule and stripping them of their cloak, -yet we are tireless in their cause, appealing from court -to court till we reach the Supreme Judge and move -Him to set free our poor clients, moaning in the dungeons -of Purgatory. There is no cause too feeble for my -pleading; by my prayers a hundred stepmothers, -fifty money-lenders, eighty monks, and twenty-five -apostate nuns have won to Paradise; so, daughter if -you will but ... (<i>catches sight of <span class="smcap">Pepita</span> and <span class="smcap">Juanito</span> -who have stolen up, and are listening to him open-mouthed</i>) -Godmorrow, lord and lady! I wonder ... has -this poor friar any toy or sugar-plum to please little -lords and ladies? (<i><span class="smcap">Pepita</span> and <span class="smcap">Juanito</span> exchange shy, -excited looks, laugh and hang their heads.</i>) Now, my -hidalgo, tell me would you liefer have a couple of ripe -figs or two hundred years off Purgatory? (<i>He winks -at <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span>, who has been staring at him with a -cold surprise.</i>)</p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i> (<i>laughing and blushing</i>): I’d like to see the -figs before I answer.</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i> (<i>with a loud laugh</i>): Well answered, Doña -Doubting Thomas (<i>turning to <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span></i>). You -Spaniards pass at once for the most doubting and the -most credulous of the nations. You believe every<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242"></a>[242]</span> -word of your priest and doubt every word of your -neighbour. Why, I remember ... may I sit down, -daughter?... I remember once at Avila....</p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: You have not yet shown us these two -figs.</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: No, nor I have! As your poor folk say, -“One ‘take’ is worth a score of ‘I’ll gives.’” Give -me your balls. (<i>He makes cabalistic signs over them.</i>) -There now, they are figs, and brebas at that! What, -you don’t believe me? (<i>noticing their disappointed -faces.</i>) It must be at the next meeting, little lord and -lady. Half a dozen for each of you, my word as a tr—— as -a friar. But you must not let me keep you from -your business ... I think you have business with a -ball, over at that wall yonder?</p> - -<p><i>Pepita and Juanito</i>: Come and play with us.</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: No, no, it would not suit my frock. Another -day, maybe. Listen, get you to your game of ball, -but watch for the Moor who may come swooping down -on you like this (<i>He catches them up in his arms, -they laughing and struggling</i>): fling them over his shoulders -as it were a bag of chestnuts. Then hie for the -ovens of Granada! (<i>He trots them back to the wall, one -perched on either shoulder.</i>) Now, my beauties, you -busy yourselves with your ball and expect the Moor. -But mind! He’ll not come if you call out to him. -(<i>He returns to the bewildered <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span>.</i>) I think that -will keep them quiet and occupied a little space. Well, -I suppose your sisters are having their <i>siesta</i> and dreaming -of ... I’ll sit here a little space if I may, your -court is cool and pleasant.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p>(<i>Pause.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Dennys</i> (<i>looking at her quizzically</i>): So all day long -you sit and dream and sing the Hours.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243"></a>[243]</span></p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>coldly</i>): And is that not the life of a -religious in your country?</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: And so my tongue has betrayed my birth? -Well, it is the Judas of our members. But I am not -ashamed of coming from beyond the Pyrenees. And -as to the life of a religious in France—what with these -roving knaves that call themselves “companions” -and make war on every man, and every woman, too, -and the ungracious Jacquerie that roast good knights -in the sight of their lady wife and children, and sack -nunneries and rape the nuns, why the Hours are apt -to be sung to an un-gregorian tune. And then the -followers of the Regent slaying the followers of the -Provost of Paris in the streets....</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Oh, the hate of kings and dukes -and desperate wicked men! Were such as they -but chained, there might be room for peace and -contemplation.</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: The hate of kings and dukes and desperate -wicked men! But, daughter, the next best thing to -love is hate. ’Tis the love and hate of dead kings and -lovely dead Infantas has filled the garden-closes with -lilies and roses, and set men dipping cloths in crimson -dye, and broidering them in gold, and breaking -spears in jousts and tourneys ... that love and hate -that never dies, but is embalmed in songs and ballads, -and....</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Brother, you are pleading the cause of -sin.</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: It has no need of my pleading, lady. Why, -I know most of the cots and castles between here and -the good town of Paris. I have caught great, proud -ladies at rere-supper in their closets, drinking and -jesting and playing on the lute with clerks and valets, -and one of them with his hand beneath her breast, -while her lord snored an echo to the hunter’s horn that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244"></a>[244]</span> -rang through the woods of his dreams; and in roadside -inns I have met little, laughing nuns, who....</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>rising</i>): You speak exceeding strangely -for a friar, nor is it meet I should hear you out.</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Nay, daughter, pardon my wild tongue; -the tongue plays ever ape to the ear, and if the ear is -wont to hear more ribald jests than paters, why then -the tongue betrays its company ... nay, daughter, -before you go, resolve me this: <i>what is sin?</i> To my -thinking ’tis the twin-sister of virtue, and none but their -foster-mother knows one from t’other. Are horses -and tourneys and battles sin? Your own St. James -rides a great white charger and leads your chivalry -against the Moors. (<i>With a sly wink</i>) I have met many -an hidalgo who has seen him do it! And we are told -there was once an angelic war in Heaven, and I ween -the lists are ever set before God’s throne, and the -twelve Champions, each with an azure scarf, break lances -for a smile from Our Lady. And as to rich, strange -cloths and jewels, the raiment of your painted wooden -Seville virgins would make the Queen of France herself -look like a beggar maid. And is love sin? The -priests affirm that God is love. Tell me then, daughter, -what is the birth-mark of the twin-sister sin that we -may know and shun her?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>in a very low voice</i>): Death.</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Death? (<i>half to himself</i>). Yes, I have seen -it at its work ... that flaunting, wanton page at -Valladolid, taunting the old Jew doctor because ere -long all his knowledge of herbs and precious stones -would not keep him sweet from the worm, and ere -the week was done the pretty page himself cold and -blue and stiff, and all the ladies weeping. And the -burgher’s young wife at Arras, a baby at each breast, -and her good man, his merry blue eyes twinkling, -crying, “Oh, my wife is a provident woman, Dennys,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245"></a>[245]</span> -and has laid up two pairs of eyes and four hands and -four strong legs and two warm hearts against her old -age and mine” ... then how he laughed! And ere -the babies had cut their first tooth it was violets and -wind-flowers she was nourishing.... Ay, Death ... -when I was a child I mind me, and still sometimes, as -I grow drowsy in my bed, my fancies that have been -hived all day begin to swarm—buzzing, stinging, here, -there, everywhere ... then they take shape, and -start marching soberly two and two, bishops and monks, -and yellow-haired squires, and little pert clerks, and -oh, so many lovely ladies—those ladies that we spoke -of, who being dead have yet a thousand lives in the -dreams of folk alive—Dame Venus, Dame Helena, the -slave-girl Briseis, Queen Iseult, Queen Guinevere, the -Infanta Polyzene; and, although they weep sorely -and beat with their hands, a herald Moor shepherds -them to the dance of the grisly King, who, having -danced a round with each of them, hurls them down -into a black pit ... down which I, too, shortly fall -... to come up at the other side, like figures on -Flemish water-clocks, at the birds matins.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>in an awed voice</i>): Why ... ’tis strange -... but I, too, fall asleep thus!</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i> (<i>shaking his finger at her</i>): For shame, -daughter, for the avowal! It tells of rere-suppers of -lentils and <i>manjar-blanca</i> in the dorter, or, at least, of -faring too fatly in the frater ... what if I blab on -you to the Archbishop? Well, this is a piteous grave -discourse! I had meant to talk to you of Life, and -lo! I have talked of Death.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Pepita</span> and <span class="smcap">Juanito</span> come running up.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: We waited and waited, but the Moor <i>never</i> -came!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246"></a>[246]</span></p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i> (<i>gazing at them in bewilderment</i>): The Moor? -What Moor ... Don Death’s trumpeter? Why, to -be sure! Beshrew me for a wool-gatherer! It was -this way: as he was riding forth from the gate of -Elvira he was stricken down with colic by Mahound, -because in an <i>olla</i> made him by his Christian slave he -had unwittingly eaten of the flesh of swine.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>The children shriek with laughter.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Oh, you are such a funny man! Isn’t he, -Sister Pilar? But you must come and play with us -now.</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Well, what is the sport to be?</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: Bells of Sevilla ... ’tis about Don Juan -Tenorio.</p> - -<p><i>Pepita</i>: But Sister Pilar will never dance, and it -takes a big company.</p> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: We’ll play it three. When we reach the -word “grave” we all fall down flop. Come!</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>They take hands and dance round, singing</i>:</p> - -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Bells of Sevilla, Carmona, and all</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Toll, toll, as we carry the pall</div> - <div class="verse indent4">(Weep, doñas, weep.)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For Don Juan the fairy</div> - <div class="verse indent4">(Chant <i>miserere</i>.)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The lovely and brave</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is cold in his grave.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>They fall down.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Juanito</i>: But we have none to sing the last <i>copla</i> -for us that we may spring up again. <i>Dear</i> Sister Pilar, -couldn’t you <i>once</i>?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247"></a>[247]</span></p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>She smilingly shakes her head.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Come, daughter, be merciful.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Her expression hardens and she again shakes her -head. In the meantime, <span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> has -come up unobserved, and suddenly in a clear, ringing -voice, she begins to sing</i>:</p> - -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Into the earth, priest, lower the bier,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The glory of Seville is withered and sere</div> - <div class="verse indent4">(Weep, doñas, weep.)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But Don Juan Tenorio</div> - <div class="verse indent4">(Carol the <i>gloria</i>.)</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With a caper so brave</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Leaps up from the grave.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>They all jump up laughing. <span class="smcap">Dennys</span> stares at -<span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> with a bold and, at the same -time, dazzled admiration. The sun seems suddenly -to shine more brightly upon them and the children. -<span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> is in the shadow.</i></p> - -</div> - -<h5>SCENE III</h5> - -<div class="scene"> - -<p><i>Nine o’clock in the evening of the same day. The -convent’s orange orchard. From the chapel is wafted -the voices of the nuns singing Compline. A horse -whinnies from the other side of the orchard wall.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>who all through this scene is at -the other side of the wall and hence invisible</i>): Whist! -Muza! Whist, my beauty! (<i>sings</i>):</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248"></a>[248]</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Ave Maria gloriosa</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Virgen Santa, preciosa,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cómo eres piadosa</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Todavía!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> enters as he sings and walks -hurriedly towards the wall.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> (<i>sings</i>):</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Gracia plena, sin mancilla,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Abogada,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Por la tu merced, Señora,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Faz esta maravilla</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Señalada.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>quickly and tonelessly, as if -repeating a lesson</i>): Oh, disembodied voice! Like the -cuckoo’s, you tell of enamelled meads watered by -fertile streams and of a myriad small hidden beauties -that in woods and mountains the spring keeps sheltered -from men’s eyes.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>laughing softly</i>): Sir knight, -howbeit I have never till this moment heard your -voice, yet I can tell ’tis not an instrument tuned to -these words.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: A pox on <i>trovares</i> and clerks, and -the French Courts of Love.... I’ll trust to the union -of the moon and my own hot blood to find me words!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>mockingly</i>): The moon’s a cold -dead mare, is your blood a lusty enough stallion to -beget ought on <i>her</i>?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>with an impatient exclamation</i>): -I’ve not come to weave fantastic talk like serenading -Moors. All I would say can be said in the Old -Christians’ Castilian.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249"></a>[249]</span></p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Well, sir knight, speak to me -then in Castilian.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p>(<i>Pause.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>slowly and deliberately</i>): So you -have come to the tryst.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: So it would seem.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p>(<i>Pause.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>as if having come to a sudden -resolution</i>): Listen, lady. I am no carpet knight, -dubbed with a jester’s bladder at a rere-supper of -infantas. I won my spurs when I was fourteen at the -Battle of Salado. Since then I have been in sieges -and skirmishes and night-alarms, enough to dint ten -coats of mail. And because there is great merit in -fighting the Moors, I have permitted myself to sin -lustily. I have even lain with the daughters of Moors -and Jews, for which I went on foot to Compostella -and did sore penance, for it is a heavy sin, and the one -that brought in days gone by the flood upon the earth. -But never have I sinned with the wife or daughter or -kinswoman of my over-lord, or with one of the brides -of Christ. I am from Old Castille, and I cannot forget -my immortal soul. But I verily believe that old witch -Trotaconventos has laid a spell upon me; for she has -so inflamed my blood with her talk of your eyes, your -lashes, your small white teeth, your scarlet lips and -gums, your breasts, your flanks, your ankles ... oh, -I know well the tune to which old bawds trumpet their -wares; and man is so fashioned as to be swayed by -certain words that act on him like charms—such as -“breasts,” “hips,” “lips”—and must as surely burn -at the naming of them as a hound must prick his ears<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250"></a>[250]</span> -and bay at the sound of a distant horn, but it is but -with a small, wavering flame, soon quenched, with a “no, -no, gutter-crone, none of your scurvy, worm-eaten -goods for me!” But when the old witch talked of -you, ’twas with the honeyed tongue of Pandar himself, -the same that stole from the good Knight, Troilus, all -manliness and pride of arms. And she has strangely -stirred my dreams ... they are ever of scaling towers -and mining walls; but, although dreaming, I know well -the towers are not of stone, nor the mines dug in earth -... lady ... I think I am sick ... I——</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>frightened</i>): What ails the man? -... but ... Trotaconventos ... I had not thought -... ’tis all so strange....</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>solemnly</i>): Why did you come -to the postern to-night, Sister Assumcion?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>angrily</i>): Why did I come? A -pretty question! I came because of the exceeding importunities -of Trotaconventos, who said you lay sick -for love of me.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>low, sternly</i>): You are the bride -of Christ. Is your profession a light thing?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>shrilly</i>): Profession? Much wish -I had to be professed! I do not know who my mother -was nor who my father. I was reared by the priest of -a little village near the Moorish frontier. He was good-natured -enough so long as the parishioners were regular -with their capons and sucking-pigs laid on the altar -for the souls of the dead, but all he cared for was sport -with his greyhound and ferret, and they said he hadn’t -enough Latin to say the <i>Consecration</i> aright, and that -the souls of his parishioners were in dire peril through -his tongue tripping and stumbling over the office of -Baptism, so ’twas little respect for religion that I -learned in his house. And so little did I dream of being -professed a nun that though the fear of the Moors lay<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251"></a>[251]</span> -black over the village, and the other maids could not -go to fill their pitchers at the well or take the goatherds -their midday bread and garlic without their hearts -trembling like a bird, yet as to me I never tired of -hearing the tale of the Infanta Proserpine, who, as she -was weaving garlands in her father’s garden, was -stolen by the Moorish king, Pluton; and I would -pray, yes, pray at the shrine of Our Lady on the hill to -lull my guardian-angel asleep and sheath his sword, -and on that very day to send a fine Moorish knight in -a crimson <i>marlota</i> and armour glittering in the sun, -clattering down the bridle-path to carry me off to -Granada, where, if it had meant a life of ease and -pleasure, I would gladly have bowed down before the -gold and marble Mahound.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: How came you, then, to take -the veil?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>bitterly</i>): Through no choice of my -own. When I was twelve, the priest said he had law -business in Seville, and asked me if I’d like to go with -him. If I’d like to go with him! It was my dream to -see Seville, and I had made in my fancy a silly, simple -picture—a town which was always a great fair, stall -upon stall of bright, glittering merchandise, and laughter -and merriment, and tumblers and dancers, threaded -with a blue river upon which ships with silken sails -and figureheads of heathen gods, laden with lords and -ladies, and painted birds that talked, were ever sailing -up and down, and all small and very brightly coloured, -like the pictures in a merry lewd book of fables by an -old Spanish <i>trovar</i>, Ovid, for which my priest cared more -than for his breviary. And oh, the adventures that -were to wait me there! Well, we set out, I riding -behind him on his mule ... if I shut my eyes it all -comes back as if it were but yesterday.... I jolted -and sore and squeamish from my nearness to him, as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252"></a>[252]</span> -his linen was as foul as were the corporals in his Church -... then the band of merchants and their varlets we -travelled with for greater safety on the road.... It -was bicker, bicker all the time between them and my -priest ... each time we came to a bridge it was, -“Nay, sir priest, we’ll not let you across for you and -your cloth pay naught to their building and upkeep,” -and then.... Oh, ’twas a tedious journey, and took -the heart out of me. Well, we reached Seville towards -dusk ... a close, frowning, dirty town, in truth, -nought but a Morisco settlement such as we had at -home—the houses all blank and grim like dead faces, -and oh! the stink of dogs’ corpses! And not a soul -to be seen for fear of the Guzmans and the Ponces.... -And yet I’d catch the whiff of orange-flowers across -the walls, and I heard a voice singing the ballad, <i>Count -Arnaldo</i>, to the lute ... ’tis strange, these two things, -whiffs of orange-flower at night and the <i>Count Arnaldo</i> -... it has ever been the same with me, they turn the -years to come to music and perfume ... or, rather, -’tis as if the years had come and gone, and already I -was old and dreaming them back again. Well, albeit -like a pious little maid, I had said a Pater and Ave for -the parents of St. Julian that he might send me a good -lodging, ’twas to the house of Trotaconventos the priest -took me that night, and it seemed to me indeed an evil -house and she a witch, and I never closed my eyes all -night. Next morning she brought me here, and after -that night, what with its cool dorter and frater, and its -<i>patio</i> and gardens, it seemed like the castle of Rocafrida—the -fairy houses in ballads; and whether I would or -not I became a novice ... a dowerless novice without -clothes or furniture, and never a coin even to give the -servants at Christmas ... and then ... what would -you? Once a novice ’tis wellnigh impossible to ’scape -the black veil (<i>her tone once more bantering</i>). And that’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253"></a>[253]</span> -the end of the story, and may the good things that -come be for all the shire. Did the daughters of the -Moors and Jews tell you such prosy tales?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p>(<i>Pause.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: You have not yet told me -why you came to the postern to-night.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>in a voice where archness tries to -conceal embarrassment</i>): Why, you must be one of -the monkish knights of Santiago! I feel like a penitent -in the Confessional ... <i>mea culpa, mea culpa, mea -maxima culpa</i>, aha! aha!</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>very solemnly</i>): I will know. -Did that old witch in mandragora or henbane, or whatever -be the hellish filters that hold the poison of love, -pour <i>me</i> hurtling and burning through your veins as -you were poured through mine?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Jesus!... I ... she did indeed -please my fancy with the picture that she drew of you -... but come, sir knight! You forget I have not -yet seen your face, much less....</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>slowly</i>): So on a cold stomach, -through caprice and a little <i>accidia</i> you were ready to -forfeit eternal bliss and ... I will not mince my -words ... make Our Lord Jesus Christ a cuckold?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Well, of all the strange talk! I -vow, Sir Knight, it is as if you blamed me for coming -to the tryst. Have you forgotten how for weeks you -did importune that old witch with prayers and vows -and tears and groans that she should at least contrive I -should hold speech with you to give you a little ease of -your great torment? And what’s more, ’tis full six -weeks since you began plaguing me by proxy; at least, -I have not failed in coyness.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: True, lady, I ask your pardon.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254"></a>[254]</span> -Why should I blame you for my dreams? (<i>half to himself</i>) -a phantom fire laying waste a land of ghosts and -shadows ... then a little wind wafting the smell of -earthly things ... wet flowers and woods ... its -wings dropping wholesome rain and lo! the fantastic -flames with dying hisses vanish in the smoke that -kindled them.... Lips? Lashes? Haunches? I -spoke foolishly; they are not enough. How can I tell -my dreams? (<i>his voice grows wild</i>). Lips straining -towards lips against the pulling back of all the hosts of -Heaven ... a sin so grave as to be own sister to -virtue ... oh! sweetness coming out of horror ... -once my horse’s hoofs crushed a seven years’ old -Moorish maid ... ooh!</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>During the last words, <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> has crept up -unperceived.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Sister, I missed you at Compline.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Indeed! And in the interval -have you been made prioress or sub-prioress?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Sister Assumcion, this is not the time -for idle taunts. I cannot say I love you, and in this I -know I err, for no religious house can flourish except -Sisters Charity, Meekness, and Peace are professed -among its nuns. But I came for the honour of this house.... -God knows its scutcheon is blotted enough ... -have you forgotten Sister Isabel?... believe me I -<i>must</i> speak; it would go ill with me were I to see a -sister take horse for hell and not catch hold of the -bridle, nay, fling my body underneath the hoofs, if -that could stop the progress.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: And what is all this tedious -prose? Because, forsooth, feeling faint at Compline, -I crept out to take the evening air.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: You lie, sister. Think you I am deaf?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255"></a>[255]</span> -As I drew near a man’s voice reached me from the other -side of the wall. (<i>Raising her voice.</i>) Most impious of -all would-be adulterers, know that your banns will be -forbidden by the myriad voices of the Church Militant, -the Church Triumphant, <i>and</i> the Church in Torment. -For she (and all nuns do so), who through the watches -of the night prays for the dead, raises up a ghostly -bodyguard to fight for her virginity. Beware of the -dead! They hedge this sister round.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>shrilly</i>): You canting, white-lipped, -sneering witch! You whose breasts are no bigger than -a maid of twelve! You ... you ... this talk comes -ill from you ... do you think me blind? Oh, Sister -Vanity, what of your veil drawn down so modestly to -your eyes in frater or in chapter, but when there are -lay visitors in the parlour, or even Don Jaime gossiping -in the <i>patio</i>, have I not seen that same veil creep up -and up, till it reveals the broad, white brow? Oh, and -the smile hoarded like a miser’s gold that when at last -it is disclosed all may the more marvel at the treasure -of small, white teeth! Oh, swan who loves solitude -but who, of all birds, is the most swayed by the -music of ... mendicant friars!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Silence!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Aha! That shaft went home! -What of the Deadly Sins grimacing behind the masks -of the virtues? Why do you hate me so? Well, I -will tell you. ’Tis the work of our old friend of the -Catechism—Envy, the jaundiced, sour-breathed Don. -Remember, Sister Pilar: Thou shalt not envy thy -sister’s flanks, nor her merry tongue, nor her red lips, nor -any of her body’s members. Over my shoulder to-day, -I saw the look with which you followed the friar and -me.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>in a voice choked with passion</i>): Silence! -you peasant’s bastard! You who have crept into a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256"></a>[256]</span> -house of high born ladies and made it stink with as -rank a smell as though a goat had laid down among -Don Pedro’s Arab mares. Poor mummer! From a -little, red-cheeked, round-eyed peasant girl, I have seen -you moulding yourself to the pattern of our high-born -visitors—from one the shrill laugh, from another the -eyes blackened with kohl, from a third the speech -flowery from <i>Amadis</i> and other profane books—but all -the civet and musk your fancy pours on your image of -yourself cannot drown the peasant’s garlic. You -flatter yourself, Sister Assumcion; <i>I</i>, a Guzman, -whose mother was a Perez, and grandame a Padilla, -how could I for a second envy <i>you</i>?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>laughing</i>): But peasant’s blood -can show red in the lips and gums, and a bastard’s -breasts can be as full and firm, her limbs as long and -slender as those of a Guzman or a Padilla. Your rage -betrays you, Sister Pilar. I bid you good-night.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Exit.</i> (<i>Pause.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: My God! Envy! It has a sour smell. -And rage and pride—two other deadly sins whose smell -is ranker than that of any peasant. (<i>Shrilly</i>) Sloth! -Avarice! Gluttony! Lust! Why do you linger? -Your brothers wait for you to begin the feast.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Sinks on her knees.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p>Oh, heavenly advocate! Sweet Virgin of compassion, -by your seven joys and seven sorrows I beseech -you to intercede for me. I have sinned, I have sinned, -my soul has become loathsome to me. Oh, Blessed -Virgin, a boon, a boon! That either by day or in the -watches of the night, though it be but for a second of -time I may behold the woof of things without the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257"></a>[257]</span> -warp of sin ... a still, quiet, awful world, and all the -winds asleep.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>From beyond the wall comes a small whinny, then -the jingle of spurs and the sound of departing hoofs. -<span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> starts violently.</i></p> - -</div> - -<h4>ACT II</h4> - -<h5>SCENE I</h5> - -<div class="scene"> - -<p><i>A room in <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos’s</span> house. The walls -are hung with bunches of dried herbs and stags’ antlers. -On a table stands a big alembic surrounded by snakes -and lizards preserved in bottles, and porcupines’ -quills. <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span> is darning a gorget and -talking to <span class="smcap">Don Salomon</span>. The beginning of this -scene is happening simultaneously with the last part -of the previous one.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: A fig for a father’s love! To seek -for it is, as the proverb has it, to seek pears on an elm -tree.</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: Pardon me, oh pearl of wisdom. Our -Law has shown that a mother’s love is as dross to a -father’s. In the book called Genesis we are told that -when there was the flood of water in the time of Noah, -the fathers fled with their sons to the mountains, and -bore them on their heads that the waters might not -reach them, while the mothers took thought only of -their own safety, and climbed up on the shoulders of -their sons. And at the siege of Jerusalem....</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Oh, a pox on you and your devil’s -lore! It is proverbs and songs that catch truth on the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258"></a>[258]</span> -wing, and they tell ever of a mother’s love. Would -you have me believe in your love to Pepita and Juanito -when I saw new hopes and schemes spring up as quickly -in your heart as the flowers on Isabel’s grave.... -I never yet have met a man who could mourn the dead; -for them ’tis but the drawing of a rotten molar, a -moment’s sharp pain, and then albeit their gums may -ache a day, they will already be rejoicing in the ease -and freedom won by its removal.</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: There was once a young caliph, and -though he had many and great possessions, the only -one he valued a fig was one of his young wives. She -died, and night descended on the soul of the caliph. -One evening her spirit came to him, as firm and tangible -as had been her body, and after much sweet and refreshing -discourse between them, beneath which his -grief melted like dew, she told him that he might at -will evoke her presence, but that each time he did so -he would forfeit a year of life.... He invoked her -the next night, and the next, and the next ... but he -was close on eighty when he died.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>triumphantly</i>): Just so! The caliph -was a man; you do but confirm my words.</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: Well, let us consider, then, <i>your</i> love -to your children. First, there was Isabel, and next, -that exceeding handsome damsel, Sister Assumcion ... -nay, nay, it is vain protesting; the whole town knows -she was a cunning brat that all your forty summers -and draughts and chirurgy were powerless to keep out -of the world ... well, these two maids, both lusty -and vegetal, and made for the bearing of fine children, -what must you do but have them both professed in -one of these nunneries ... <i>nunneries</i>! Your ballads -tell of a Moorish king who was wont to exact a yearly -tribute of sixty virgins from your race; what of your -God who exacts more like a thousand?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259"></a>[259]</span></p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Out on you, you foul-mouthed -blaspheming Jew! I’d have you bear in mind that -you are in the house of an Old Christian.<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: Ay, an Old Christian who recked so -little of her law and faith that, just because they paid a -little more, has suckled the brats of the Moriscos!<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Pooh! An old dog does not bark -at a tree-stump; you’ll not scare me with those old, -spiteful whispers of <i>los Abades</i>. Come, drag me before -the <i>alcalde</i> and his court, and I’ll disprove your words -with this old withered breast ... besides, as says -the proverb, He whose father is a judge goes safe to -trial—Trotaconventos walks safe beneath the cloak -of Doña Maria de Padilla, for Queen Blanche dies a -virgin-wife, if there be any virtue in my brews.</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: You took it for a threat? Come, -come, you are growing suspicious with advancing -years. But we were talking of your love to your -daughters. Resolve me this: why did you make -them nuns?</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Why did I make them nuns? -Because of all professions, it is the most pleasing to -God and His Saints.</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: So that was your reason? Well, I -read your action somewhat differently. Of all the -diverse flames that burn and corrode the heart of man, -there is none so fierce as the flames of a mother’s jealousy -of her growing daughters. You have known that -flame—the years that withered your charms were -ripening theirs, and, that you might not endure the -bitterness of seeing them wooed and kissed and bedded, -you gave them—to your God. Wait! I have not yet -said my say. Rumours have reached me of the flame -you have kindled in the breast of an exceeding rich<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260"></a>[260]</span> -and noble knight for Sister Assumcion, and that, -albeit, you knew a score of other maids would have been -as good fuel, and brought as good a price; just as some -eight years since, you chose Isabel to kindle the fire -in me. Why? Of all your so-called learned doctors—the -most of them but peasants, trembling, as they -roast the chestnuts on winter nights, at their grandame’s -tales—there is one I do revere, Thomas Aquinas, -for he is deeply read in the divine Aristotle, and, to -boot, he knows the human heart. Well, your Thomas -Aquinas tells of a sin which he calls ‘morose delectation,’ -which is the sour pleasure—a dried olive to -palates too jaded now for sweet figs—that monks and -nuns and women past their prime find in the viewing -of, or the hearing of, or the thinking of the bodily joys -of the young and lusty. And ‘morose delectation’ is -never so bitter-sweet as when aroused in a mother by -the amours of her daughter, and this it was that got in -your bosom the upper hand of jealousy and made you -choose your own daughters to inflame the love of this -knight and me.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Well ... by Our Lady ... you -... (<i>bursts out laughing</i>). Why, Don Salomon, in -spite of all your rabbis and rubbish, you have more -good common sense than I had given you credit for! -(<i>laughs again</i>).</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Don Salomon</span>, in spite of himself, gives a little -complacent smile.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: Laughter is the best physic; I am -glad to have been able to administer it. But to return -to the real purport of my visit. I tell you, you are -making the convent of San Miguel to stink both far -and wide, and I look upon it as no meet nursery for -Moses and Rebecca.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261"></a>[261]</span></p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Moses and Rebecca! Truly most -pretty apt names for Christian children! But think -you not that Judas and Jezebel would ring yet sweeter -on the ear? Then, without doubt, their Christian -playmates would pelt them through the streets with -dung and dead mice—Moses and Rebecca, forsooth! -In the city of Seville they will ever be Pepita and -Juanito.</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: Pepita and Juanito ... foolish, -tripping names to suit the lewd comic imps of hell in -one of your miracle plays. The Talmud teaches there -is great virtue in names, and when they come with me -to Granada they will be Moses and Rebecca.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Go with you to Granada? What -wild tale is this?</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: ’Tis no wild tale. You rated me for -indifference to my children, but I am not so indifferent -as to wish to see them reared in ignorance and superstition -by a flock of empty-headed, vicious nuns who have -become like Aholah and Aholibah, they who committed -whoredoms in Egypt.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Once more, an old dog does not -bark at a tree-stump. <i>You’ll</i> never go to Granada.</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: And why not, star-reader?</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Because you are of the race of -Judas that sold our Lord for a few sueldos. There -are many leeches more learned than you in Granada, -but none in Castille, therefore....</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i> (<i>indignantly</i>): Whence this knowledge -of the leeches of Granada? Name me one more learned -than I.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>ignoring the interruption</i>): Therefore, -in that in Castille you earn three times what you would -do in Granada, you will continue following the court -from Valladolid to Toledo, from Toledo to Seville, until -the day when you are unable to save Don Pedro’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262"></a>[262]</span> -favourite slave, and he rifles your treasure and has you -bound with chains and cast into a dungeon to rot -slowly into hell.</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i> (<i>quite unmoved</i>): Howbeit, you will -see that to one of my race his children are dearer than -his coffers. Unless this convent gets in better odour, -Moses and Rebecca will soon be playing in Granada -round the Elvira gate, and sailing their boats upon -the Darro ... have you that balsam for me?</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Ay, and have you two maravedis -for it?</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i> (<i>taking out two coins from his purse</i>): -Are you, indeed, an Old Christian? Had you no -grandam, who, like your own daughter, was not -averse to a circumcised lover? Methinks you love -gold as much as any Jew.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>drops the coins on the table and listens -to their ring</i>): Yes, they sing in tune; a good Catholic -<i>doremi</i>, I’d not be surprised to hear coins from <i>your -purse</i> whine ‘alleluia’ falsely through their nose—the -thin noise of alloy and a false mint. (<i>Goes and rummages -in a coffer, and with her back turned to him, says -nonchalantly</i>): Neither your ointment nor the Goa -stones powdered in milk have reduced the swelling.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Don Salomon</span> does not answer, and <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span> -looks sharply over her shoulder.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Well?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>He looks at her in silence. She walks over to him.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Here is your balsam. As touching -sickness, I have ever hearkened to you; you may -speak.</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: The ointment ... I hoped it might<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263"></a>[263]</span> -give you some relief of your pain; but as to the swelling....</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: It will not diminish?</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: No.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: You are certain, Don Salomon?</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: Yes.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: But ... surely ... the Table of -Spain, Don Pedro’s carbuncle ... I verily believe -Doña Maria could get me it for a night ... ’tis the -most potent stone in the world.</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: Dame, you have ever liked plain -speaking. Neither in the belly of the stag, nor in the -womb of the earth, nor in God’s throne, is there a -precious stone that can decrease that swelling.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Can one live long with it?</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: No.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: How long?</p> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i>: I cannot say to a day.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span> sinks wearily down into a -chair. <span class="smcap">Don Salomon</span> gazes at her in silence for a -time, then comes up and lays his hand on her shoulder.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Salomon</i> (<i>gravely</i>): Old friend, from my heart I -envy you. A wise man who had travelled over all the -earth came to the court of a certain caliph, and the -caliph asked him whom of all the men he had met on -his wanderings he envied most; and the wise man -answered: ‘Oh, Caliph, ’twas an old blind pauper -whose wife and children were all dead.’ And when -the caliph asked him why he envied one in such sorry -plight, he answered, ‘because the only evil thing is fear, -and he had nought to fear.’ You, too, have nothing -to fear, except you fear the greatest gift of God—sleep.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Exit quietly.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_264"></a>[264]</span></p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>wildly</i>): Nothing to fear! Oh, my -poor black soul ... hell-fire ... the devil hiding -like a bug in my shroud ... oh, Blessed Virgin, save -me from hell-fire!</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>The ghost of <span class="smcap">Don Juan Tenorio</span> appears.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: There is no hell.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Who are you? Speak!</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: I am the broad path that leads -to salvation; I am the bread made of wheat; I am -the burgeoning of buds and the fall of the leaf; I am -the little white wine of Toro and the red wine of Madrigal; -I am the bronze on the cheek of the labourer -and his dreamless, midday sleep beneath the chestnut -tree; I am the mirth at wedding-wakes; I am the -dance of the Hours whose rhythm lulls kings and -beggars, nuns, and goatherds on the hills, giving them -peace, and freeing them from dreams; I am innocence; -I am immortality; I am Don Juan Tenorio.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Don Juan Tenorio? Then you -come from hell.</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: I have spoken: there is no hell. -There is no hell and there is no heaven; there is nought -but the green earth. But men are arrogant and full of -shame, and they hide truth in dreams.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Ay, but what of the black sins that -weigh down my soul?</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: Dreams are the only sin.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: What, then, of death?</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: Every death is cancelled by a -birth; hence there is no death.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: But I must surely die, and that ere -long.</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: But if others live? Prisoners! -Prisoners! Locked up inside yourselves; like children<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265"></a>[265]</span> -born in a dark tower, as their parents were before them. -And round and round they run, and beat their little -hands against the wall, or stare at the old faded arras -upon which fingers, dead a hundred years ago, have -pictured quaint shapes that hint at flowers and birds -and ships. And all the time the creaking door is on -the jar, the gaolers long since dead.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>The ghost of <span class="smcap">Sister Isabel</span> appears.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: Mother!</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>in horror</i>): Isabel!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: I come from Purgatory.</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: Still a prisoner, bound by the -dreams of the living.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: As they are by the dead.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Why do you visit me, daughter?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: To bid you save my little son from -circumcision, my daughter from concubinage to the -infidels.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: How?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: By preserving the virginity of my -sisters in religion.</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: Virginity! What of Christ’s -fig-tree?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: Demon, what do <i>you</i> know of Christ?</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: Once we were one, but....</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: Lying spirit!</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: That part of me that was he, was -sucked bloodless by the insatiable dreams of man.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: Mother, hearken not....</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: Hearken not....</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: To this lying spirit.</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: To this spirit drugged with -dreams.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: Else you will forfeit....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266"></a>[266]</span></p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: Else you will forfeit....</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: Your immortal soul.</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: Your immortal body.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: All is vanity,</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: All is vanity.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: Save only the death,</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: Save only the death,</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: And the resurrection,</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: And the resurrection,</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: Of our Lord Jesus Christ.</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: Of crops and trees and flowers -and the race of man.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Isabel</i>: Remember that they fight to lose who -fight the dead.</p> - -<p><i>Don Juan Tenorio</i>: Remember that they fight to -lose who fight the Spirit of Life.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>A violent knocking at the door. The ghosts of -<span class="smcap">Don Juan Tenorio</span> and <span class="smcap">Sister Isabel</span> vanish. -<span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span> sits up and rubs her eyes.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: I have been dreaming ... life ... -death ... my head turns. And what is this knocking?</p> - -<p><i>Voice outside</i>: Old stinking bird-lime! Heart-hammer! -Magpie! Bumble-bee! Street trailer! -Cuirass of rotten wood! Curry-comb! Corpus dragon! -I bid you open, d’ye hear?</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Why, I do believe ’tis that ardent -lover, Don Manuel de Lara. Can the baggage have -shied from the tryst?</p> - -<p><i>Voice from outside</i>: Gutter crone! Gutter crone! -The fiends of hell gnaw your marrow! I want in!</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Anon, good knight, anon! Well -... shall I throw cold water on his hopes and save my -soul? Nay, Isabel, ’tis too late; one cannot make<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267"></a>[267]</span> -shepherds’ pipes out of this old barley straw ... and -yet ... visions of sleep! Nay, through my living -daughter will I taste again the old joys and snap my -fingers at ... ghosts.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Opens the door. <span class="smcap">Don Manuel de Lara</span> bursts -into the room.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="smcap">Don Manuel de Lara</span>: Old hag, what have you done -to me? You have been riding among the signs of the -Zodiac ... I know ... and tampering with the -Scales, putting sweetness in each, then throwing in -the moon to turn the balance. Oh, you have given -me philtres ... I know, I know ... some varlet -bribed with a scarlet cloak, then strange liquid dreams -curdling the rough juice of the Spanish grape ... and -you all the while jeering and cackling at me! (<i>seizes -her roughly by the shoulders.</i>) How dare you meddle -with my dreams? You play with loaded dice.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>soothingly</i>): Wo! ass! Let me rub -thee down, ass of my wife’s brother! You must have -got an ague; the water of the Guadalquivir and Seville -figs play strange tricks with Castilian stomachs in May. -A little prayer to St. Bartholomew ... or better still, -a very soothing draught I learnt to brew long since -from a Jew doctor. Why, sir knight, what is this talk -of love philtres? The only receipt <i>I</i> know for such is -a gill of neat ankle or merry eye to three gills of hot -young blood. And have you no thanks for your old -witch? I cannot, let evil tongues wag as they will, -drum the moon from the heavens, but trust old Trotaconventos -to draw a nun from her cloister!</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>who has been standing as if -stunned</i>): Aye, there’s the rub ... I’d have the -moon dragged from the heavens (<i>laughs wildly, then -turns upon her violently</i>). Oh, I’ll shake your black<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268"></a>[268]</span> -soul out of its prison of rotted bones. I am encompassed -all around with your spells.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Don Manuel, you are sick. Lie -down on this couch and take a cool draught of reason, -for it, at least, is a medicinal stream. You have engendered -your own dreams, there have been no philtres -or spells. The abbot dines off his singing, and a -procuress must suit all tastes, and if a silly serving-wench -comes to me a-sighing and a-sobbing for some -pert groom with a heron’s feather in his cap, or trembling -lest Pedro in her distant village is giving his garlic-scented -kisses to another maid, why, then I know -nothing will salve her red eyes but sunflower seeds -culled when Venus is in the house of the Ram, or a -mumbling backwards of the psalms, on a waxen heart -to melt over the fire. But these are but foolish toys -for the vulgar, and the devil does not reveal his secrets -to an Old Christian who goes to mass every Sunday -and on feast-days too. You are not bewitched, Don -Manuel, except it be by a pair of gray eyes smiling -beneath a nun’s veil. Was she coy, perchance? Why, -coyness in a maid....</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>laughing bitterly</i>): Coy? -(<i>impatiently.</i>) I came here all hot with projects and -decision, but now it is all flowing out of me like wine -from a leaking pig-skin, and I seem bereft of will and -desire, as sometimes on the field of battle when I fight -in a dream, regardless if the issue be life or death. -(<i>Shaking himself.</i>) The fault lies not with you, good -dame; what you set out to do you have done, the which -I shall bear in mind. As to spells and philtres, they -say I was born under Saturn with the moon in the -ascendant, and, whether it be true or no, some evil -star distills dark, poisonous vapours round the nettles -and rank roots that grow in the dark places of my soul, -the which some chance word will draw from their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269"></a>[269]</span> -hiding-place and ... in plain words, your nun is all your -words painted her, but falls far short of the lineaments -lent her by my fancy; for which it is not you but that -same unbridled fancy, that is to blame. In that you -compassed the meeting, you shall have rich cloths and -a well-filled purse, but....</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>her indignation boiling over</i>): Jesus! -Here is a dainty Don! Comes far short of the linen lent -her by <i>your</i> fancy! Was then her linen foul? Or rather, -are you like Alfonso the Wise, and had you had the -making of her would you have fashioned her better -than God? I know your breed; as the proverb says, it -is but a fool that wants a bread not made with wheat. -In truth, the girl is well-formed, sprightly and hot-blooded. -I know no damsel can so well....</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: I have told you dame, you shall -be well paid for your pains. But ... but ... there -is another matter with regard to which I would -fain....</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: And so you deem old Trotaconventos -cares for naught but cloths and purses! And -what of the pride in my craft? Upon my soul! My -daintiest morsel sniffed at all round, and then Don Cat, -with a hump of his back, his tail arched, and his lips -drawn back in disdain....</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Come, dame, I am pressed for -time. I ask your pardon if I have been over nice, -and you have no need to take umbrage for your craft. -I ... would ... would ask your help ... (<i>sinks -into a chair and covers his face with his hands</i>) ... my -God, I cannot. The words choke me.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>There is a knock at the door.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Voice from outside</i>: Hola! Hecate! Goddess of -the cross-roads! Open in your graciousness.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270"></a>[270]</span></p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: ’Tis a stranger’s voice. (<i>Aside</i>) -This time ’tis a case of better the devil one does <i>not</i> -know.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Opens the door. Enter <span class="smcap">Dennys</span>.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Hail! Medea of Castille! Your fame has -drawn me all the way from France. Why, ’twill soon -rival the fame of your St. James, and from every corner -of Christendom love-sick wights and ladies will come to -you on pilgrimage.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>laughing and eyeing him with evident -favour</i>): A pox on your flowery tongue! I know you -French of old ... hot tongues and cold, hard hearts. -Oh, you saucy knave; you! But see, your cloak is -wet with dew. Come, I will shake it for you. (<i>Draws -off his cloak and at the same time slips her hand down his -neck and tickles him</i>).</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: A truce! A truce! Thus you could -unman me to yield you all my gold and tell you all my -secrets. (<i>Wriggles out of the cloak, leaving it in her -hands.</i>) Do you know the ballad of the Roman knight, -Joseph, and Doña Potiphar?</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Ay, that I do; and a poor puling -ballad it is too! But <i>you</i> are no Sir Joseph, my pretty -lad ... while others that I know ... (<i>glances resentfully -at <span class="smcap">Don Manuel de Lara</span>, who is still sitting -with his head buried in his hands. <span class="smcap">Dennys</span>, following her -glance, catches sight of him.</i>)</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Some poor, love-sick wight? Why, then, -are we guild brothers, and of that guild <i>you</i> are the -virgin, fairer and more potent than she of the kings or -of the waters; as with fists and cudgels we will maintain -against all other guilds at Holy Week. Oh! I have -heard of your miracles. That pious young widow with -a virtue as unyielding as her body was soft, how....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271"></a>[271]</span></p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Out on you, you saucy Frenchman! -It would take a French tongue to call Trotaconventos a -virgin. Why, before you were born ... come, I’ll -tell you a secret. (<i>She whispers something in his ear. -He bursts out laughing.</i>)</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Holy Mother of God! You should have -given suck to Don Ovid. Why, <i>that</i> beats all the French -<i>fabliaux</i>. Well, now as to my business. You must -know I had a wager that, disguised as a mendicant friar, -I would visit undiscovered twenty of the convents of -Seville....</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>chuckling</i>): A bold and merry -wager!</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Ay, but that is but the prelude. In one -of these convents (<i><span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span> drops his hands from -his face and sits up straight in his chair</i>) I fell into an -ambush laid by Don Cupid himself.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>bitterly</i>): To be sure! And so you -come to old Trotaconventos. To be a procuress is to -be the cow at the wedding, for ever sacrificed to the -junketings of others. ’Tis other folks’ burdens killed -the ass. Well, the time is short, the time is short, if -you want Trotaconventos’s aid.</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Why, despite her habit, ’twas the fairest -maid I have seen this side the Pyrenees, and I swear -’tis a sin she should live a nun. I fell to talking and -laughing with her; but though she is a ripe plum, I -warrant, ’tis for another hand to shake the branch. -Now you, mother, I know, go in and out of every convent -in Seville.... So will you be my most cunning and -subtle ambassador?</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Ay, but ambassadors are given -services of gold, and sumpter-mules laden with crimson -cloths, and retinues of servants, and apes and tumblers -and dancers, and purses of gold. How will <i>you</i> equip -your ambassador?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272"></a>[272]</span></p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: A <i>trovar’s</i> fortune is his tongue and lips; -so with my lips I pay. (<i>He gives her three smacking -kisses.</i>)</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Oh, you French jackanapes! Oh, -you saucy ballad-monger! So you hold your kisses -weigh like <i>maravedis</i>, do you? Well, well, I have -ever said that the lips of a fine lad hold the sweetest -wine in Spain. Now you must acquaint me more fully -with your business, if you would have me speed it.</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Why! You know it all. I love a nun of -the Convent of San Miguel, and....</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Don Manuel de Lara</span> springs from his bench -and seizes him by the shoulders.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: You scurvy, whoreson, lily-livered, -shameless son of France! <i>France!</i> The -teeming dam of whores and ballad-mongers, whose -king flies from his foes shaking a banner broidered with -the lilies of a frail woman’s garden-close. You are in -Castille, where lions guard our virgins in strong towers, -and e’er you tamper with the virtue of a professed -virgin of Spain, I will hew you into little pieces to feed -my hounds. (<i>He shakes him violently.</i>)</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>pulling him back by his cloak</i>): Let -go, you solemn, long-jowled, finicky Judas! You fox -in priest’s habit on the silver centre-piece of a king’s -table! Don Cat turned monk that he might the better -catch the monastery mice! Foul Templar escaped -from Sodom and Gomorrah! Who are <i>you</i> to take up -the glove for Seville nuns?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span>, paying no heed to <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span>, -holds <span class="smcap">Dennys</span> with one hand, and with the -other draws his dagger and places its point on his -throat.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273"></a>[273]</span></p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Now, blackbird of St. Bénoit, -you’ll tell me the name of the nun you would seduce. -D’ye hear? The name of the nun you would seduce!</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i> (<i>gasping</i>): Sister Assumcion.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Ah!</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span> lets go of <span class="smcap">Dennys</span>, who, pale and -gasping, is supported to the couch by <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span>, -she mingling the while words of condolence -with <span class="smcap">Dennys</span> and imprecations against the -<span class="smcap">Don</span>.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>to himself</i>): Strange! Passing -strange! That Moorish knight who gave me the head -wound at Gibraltar ... then years later both serenading -’neath the same balcony, in Granada ... and -then again, last year, of a sudden coming on his carved, -olive face staring at the moon from a ditch in Albarrota. -And I convinced, till then, that our lives were being -twisted in one rope to some end.... Chance meetings, -chance partings, chance meetings again. And this -<i>trovar</i>, coming to-night, on business ... why am I so -beset by dreams?</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Thanks, mother, the fiery don shook all -the humours to my head (<i>gets up</i>). Well, knight, more -kicks than ha’pence—that’s the lot of a <i>trovar</i> in Spain. -I know well, necessity makes one embrace poverty and -obedience, like the Franciscans, but I never learnt till -now that a <i>trovar</i> must take the third vow of chastity.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Pooh! A rare champion of chastity -and the vows of nuns you see before you! Why, my -sweet lad, this same Don Manuel de Lara has been -importuning me with prayers and tears and strange -fantastical ravings, that I should devise a meeting -between him ... and whom, think you? Why, this -same Sister Assumcion.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_274"></a>[274]</span></p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Sister Assumcion?</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Ay, Sister Assumcion. But, as I -tell him, he is one of these fools that seek a bread not -made of wheat. He’ll not to bed unless I rifle hell for -him and bring him Queen Helena. He comes to me -to-night with a “comely, yes, but comeliness, what of -comeliness?” and “a tempting enough for Pedro and -Juan and the rest of the workaday world, but as to me!” -And she the prettiest nun that ever took the veil, and -certain to bear off the prize for Seville in the contest -of beauty with the nuns of Toledo ... but not good -enough for him, oh no!</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Of my thirty years, I have -spent sixteen in fighting the Moors, and if I choose to -squander some of the spiritual treasures I have thus -acquired by my sword in ... (<i>he brings the words out -with difficulty</i>) dallying with nuns, who knows, maybe -<i>I</i> can afford it. But think you I’ll allow a sinewless -French <i>jongleur</i> to rifle the spiritual treasury of Spain? -For Spain is the poorer by every nun that falls. (<i>Impatiently</i>) -Pooh! If two whistling false blackbirds -choose to mate, what care I or Spain? Dame, settle -this fellow’s business with him, then ... I would -claim a hearing for my own.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Sits down on the bench and once more buries his -face in his hands. <span class="smcap">Dennys</span> taps his forehead -meaningly and winks at <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span>.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Well, mother, will you be my advocate? -Tell her I am master of arts in the university of Love, -and have learnt most cunning and pleasant gymnastics -in Italy, unknown to Pyramus and Troilus ... nay, -not that, for maidens want the moon, to wit, a Joseph -with all the cunning in love’s arts of Naso. Tell her -rather, that having been born when Venus was in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275"></a>[275]</span> -house of Saturn, and the scorpion ... you know the -kind of jargon ... I came into the world already -endowed with knowledge of love’s secrets ... nay ... -tell her (<i>his voice catches fire from his words</i>) the years, -like village lads when the Feast of St. John draws near, -have built up in my soul a heap of lusty green branches, -and old dry sticks, and frails of dried rose-petals, and -many a garland of rosemary and maiden-hair and ivy -and rue, and there it has lain until one glance from those -eyes of hers has been the spark to turn it into a crackling, -flaming, fragrant-smoked bonfire, a beacon to a thousand -farms and hamlets. Tell her I can touch the lute, -the vihuela, the guitar, the psalter, Don Tristram’s -harp ... ay, and most delicately touch her breasts. -And if she wishes a little respite from <i>our</i> love, tell her -I can wring tears from her eyes with the Matter of -Britain or the Matter of Rome—sad tales (for sadness -turns sweet when it is dead) of Dido and Iseult and -Guinevere, or make her laugh and laugh again with -tales from the clerk Boccaccio. Tell her....</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Enough, French rogue! You have -little need, it seems, of an ambassador. Well, I have -seen worse-favoured lads and (<i>with a scowl in the direction -of <span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span></i>) less honey-tongued. (<i>She rummages -in a cupboard and brings out a key.</i>) What will you give -me for this, Don Nightingale? I’ll tell you a secret; -I have a duplicate key to the postern of near every -convent in Seville, but they are not for <i>all</i> my clients, -oh no! This opens the postern of San Miguel ... -well, well, take it then. And be there to-morrow -night at nine o’clock, and I can promise you your nun -will not fail you.</p> - -<p><i>Dennys</i>: Oh, dearer than a mother! oh, most bountiful -dame! A key! A key! (<i>holds up the key</i>), I have -ever loved a key and held it the prettiest toy in Christendom. -I vow ’twas a key and not an apple that Eve<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_276"></a>[276]</span> -gave to Adam in Paradise, a key and not an apple the -goddesses strove for on Mount Ida, a key into which -the Roman smith, Vulcan, put all his amorous cunning -when he was minded to fashion a gift well pleasing to -his mistress, Venus. May you dream to-night that -you are young again, mother, and hold the keys of -heaven. And you, sir knight, what dreams shall I -wish you? (<i>Eyes <span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span> quizzically.</i>) Adieu.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Exit.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Ay! May his key bring him joy! -A very sweet rogue! Well, Don Manuel, has your -brain cooled enough to talk with me?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span>, who has remained passive and -motionless during the above scene, suddenly springs -to his feet, his eyes blazing, his cheeks flushed.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>hoarsely</i>): I, too, would have a -key ... for the convent of San Miguel.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: And would you in truth? (<i>suspiciously</i>). -Has the convent some fairer nun than -Sister Assumcion?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: How can I say? I have never -seen any of the nuns. All I ask you, dame, is for a key.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: And what if I refuse you a key, Sir -Arrogance?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: I will pay for it all you ask -... even to my immortal soul.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: And what do I want with your -immortal soul? I’d as lief have a wild cat in the -house, any market day.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>clenching his fists and glaring -at her fiercely</i>): A key, a key, old hag! Give me a -key.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277"></a>[277]</span></p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span> picks up his scarlet cloak which -he has let drop and waves in his face.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Come, come, brave bull! And has -Love, the <i>bandillero</i>, maddened you with his darts? -Old Trotaconventos must turn bull-fighter! Ah! I -know the human heart! Dog in the manger, like all -men! Too nice yourself for Sister Assumcion, but too -greedy to let another enjoy her!</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: A key!</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: No, no, Sir knight. You are not -St. Ferdinand and I am not the Moorish king that I -should yield up the keys of Seville to you without a -parley. Why do you want the key?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>suddenly growing quiet and eyeing -her ironically</i>): What if I have been on pilgrimage -to Jerusalem and found the sun too hot? I have -strange fancies. They say the founder of our house -wed with a heathen witch who danced on the hills. -(<i>Persuasively</i>) Hearken, I know you love rich fabrics; -I have silk coverlets from Malaga that are ballads for -the eye instead of for the ear, silk-threaded heathen -ballads of Mahound and the doves and Almanzor and -his Christian concubine. I have curtains from Almeric—Doña -Maria has none to rival them in the Alcazar—and -so fresh-coloured are the flowers that are embroidered -on them, that when I was a child I thought that I -could smell them, and my mother, to coax me to eat -when a dry, hot wind was parching the <i>Vega</i>, would -tell me the bees had culled the honey spread on my -bread from the flowers embroidered on these curtains. -I have necklets of gold, beaten thin like autumn beech-leaves, -taken by my grandsire from the harems of -Cordova when he stormed the city with St. Ferdinand; -ere they were necklets they were ciboriums of the Goths, -rifled by impious Tarik. Precious stones? I have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278"></a>[278]</span> -rubies like beakers with the red wine trembling to their -very lip ... one almost fears to lift them except with -a steady hand for fear they spill and stain one’s garments -red, and like to wine, the gifts they bring are -health and a merry heart. I have Scythian sapphires -that once lay in the bed of the river of Paradise, while -to win them Arimaspians were fighting Gryphons; -they are the gage of the life to come, they are blue and -cold like English ladies’ eyes who go on pilgrimage. -And I have emeralds to catch from them a blue shadow -like that of a kingfisher on green waters. He who has -store of precious stones need fear neither plague nor -fever, nor fiends, nor the terrors by night, and with -that store I will endow you if you but give me the key. -The key, good mother, the key!</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Very pretty ... but ... well ... -I know a certain king, a mighty ugly one, who laughs at -the virtues of precious stones.... Aye ... but come, -Don Manuel, we are but playing with each other. With -your own eyes you saw me give the key of the Convent -of San Miguel to the French <i>trovar</i>. Think you I have -two?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>as if stunned</i>): Not two? -To the French <i>trovar</i>?</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Why, yes, Sir knight. Your wits -are wool-gathering.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>in great excitement</i>): My cloak? -Where is my cloak? Away! the key!</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Exit.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279"></a>[279]</span></p> - -<h5>SCENE II</h5> - -<div class="scene"> - -<p><i>The orchard of San Miguel the following evening -at nine o’clock. Near the postern stands <span class="smcap">Don -Manuel de Lara</span>, motionless, his arms folded, his -cloak drawn round the lower part of his face. Towards -him hurries <span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span>.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Good evening, friar <i>trovar</i> ... -and can you not come forward to meet me? I can tell -you, sir, it needed all Trotaconventos’s eloquence to -send me to the tryst. Never before has her pleading -been so honeyed.... Why....</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: I am not the <i>trovar</i>, lady.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>starting back</i>): Holy saints defend -me! Who, then, are you?... And yet your -voice....</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: But I bear a message to you -from the <i>trovar</i>.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>sharply</i>): Well?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: His words were these: ‘Tell -her the dead grudge us our joys.’</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: What meant he?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: I am a messenger, not a reader -of riddles.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>crossing herself</i>): Strange words! -Where was it that you met him?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: In the streets of Seville ... -at night.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: And what was he doing?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: He was standing by a niche -in which was an image of Our Lady with a lamp burning -before it, and by its light he was examining a key. -And he was laughing.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Well?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280"></a>[280]</span></p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: That is all.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: All? (<i>Shrilly</i>): Who are you? -(<i>Plucks at his cloak which he allows to fall.</i>)</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Well, and are you any the -wiser?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: No, your face is unknown to me.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: And yours to me.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: And yet, your voice ... by Our -Lady, you are an ominous, louring man. And this -strange tale of the <i>trovar</i> ... why am I to credit it?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Here is the key.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: And where is he?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: That I cannot say.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Did he look sick?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: No, in the very bloom of -health.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: And he was standing under a -shrine laughing, and you approached, and he said, “Tell -her the dead grudge us our joys”.... Pooh! It -rings like a foolish ballad.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: It is true nevertheless.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: And how came you by the key?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>nonchalantly</i>): The key? -(<i>holding it out in front of him and smiling teasingly</i>). It -is delicately wrought.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>stamping</i>): A madman!</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: So many have said. But now, -in that I have borne a message to you, will you return -the grace and bear one for me? I have a kinswoman -in this sisterhood and I would fain speak with her.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>insolently</i>): Have you in truth? -We have no demon’s kinswomen here ... well, and -what is her name?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Sister Pilar.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Aye, <i>she</i> might be ... sprung -from the same still-born, white-blooded grandame.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281"></a>[281]</span></p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Ah! (<i>with suppressed eagerness</i>). -You know Sister Pilar well?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>with a short laugh</i>): Aye, that I do.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: And ... is ... is she well?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: She is never ailing.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>absently</i>): Never ailing. You -... you know her well?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Without doubt, a madman! I -have told you that I know her but too well.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: On what does her talk turn?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: For the most part on our shortcomings. -But her words are few.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>pulling himself together</i>): Well, -you would put me much in your debt if you would -carry her this letter. It bears my credentials as her -kinsman. I would speak with her at once, as I bear -weighty news for her from her home.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: And why could you not come -knocking at the porter’s lodge, as others do, and at some -hour, too, before Compline, when ends the day of a -religious?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: As to the porter’s lodge, I have -my own key. And the news, I tell you, will not keep -till morning. Handle that letter gingerly; it bears the -king’s seal.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>awed</i>): Don Pedro’s?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Aye.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Well ... as you will. I’ll take -your message. Good-night ... Sir demon; are you -not of Hell’s chivalry?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: No.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> shrugs her shoulders, looks at -him quizzically, and exit. A few minutes elapse, -during which <span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span> stands motionless; then -<span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> enters; she gives a slight bow and waits.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_282"></a>[282]</span></p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: You are Sister Pilar?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Yes.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: In the world the Lady Maria -Guzman y Perez?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Yes.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: I am Don Pablo de Guzman, -your father’s cousin’s son.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>with interest</i>): Ah! I have heard my -father speak of yours.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: You have not lately, I think, -visited your home?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Not since I was professed.... <i>I</i> obey -the bull of Pope Boniface, that nuns should keep their -cloister.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Your sister, Violante, has -lately been wed.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>eagerly</i>): Little Violante? She was -but a child when I took the black veil. Whom has she -wedded?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Er ... er ... a comrade in -arms of mine. A knight of Old Castille ... one Don -Manuel de Lara.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: And what manner of man is he? I -should wish little Violante to be happy.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: He passes for a brave soldier. -He has brought her the skulls of many Moors. She has -filled them with earth and planted them with bulbs. -Daffodils grow out of their eyes and nose.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: A strange device!</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: ’Twas Don Manuel showed her -it; such are the whimsies of Old Castille. In that -country we like to play with death.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Yet ... yet is it not a toy.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: We rarely play with love.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: No.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: No.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_283"></a>[283]</span></p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I would fain learn more of this knight. -He loves my sister?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Ah! yes. His soul snatched -the torch of love from his body, then gave it back again, -then again snatched it. She is all twined round with -his dreams; she smiles at him with his mother’s eyes; -she is Belerma the Fair and Doña Alda of his childhood’s -ballads. She is a fair ship charged with spices, -she is all the flowers that have blossomed since the -Third Day of the Creation, she is the bread not made -with wheat, she ... she ... she is a key, like this -one (<i>holding up the key</i>), but wrought in silver and -ivory.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: A key? Strange! (<i>smiling a little</i>). -And what is he to her?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: He to her? I know not ... -perhaps also a key.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p>(<i>Pause.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: So you know my home? You have -heard our slaves crooning Moorish melodies from their -quarters on moonlight nights, perchance you have -handled my father’s chessmen and the Portuguese -pennon he won from a French count at Tables ... oh! -he was so proud of that pennon! How is the Cid?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: The Cid? His bones still -moulder in Cardeña.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: No, no, my father’s greyhound ... -the one that has one eye blue and the other brown.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Ah! He still sleeps by day -and bays at the moon o’ nights.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Oh! And how tall has my oak grown -now?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Your oak?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Ah, surely they cannot have forgot to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_284"></a>[284]</span> -show it you! It was the height of a daffodil when I -took the veil. When we were children, you know, we -were told an <i>exemplum</i> of a wise Moor who planted -trees that under their shade his children’s children -might call him blessed, so we—Sancho and Rodrigo -and little Violante and me—we took acorns from the -pigs’ trough and planted them beyond the orchard, -near my mother’s bed of gillyflowers, and mine was the -only one that sent forth shoots. Oh! And the bush -of Granada roses ... they must have shown you -<i>them</i>?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: To be sure! They are still -fragrant.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: You know, they were planted from -seeds my grandsire got in the Alhambra when he was -jousting in Granada. My father was wont to call -them his harem of Moorish beauties, and there was a -nightingale that would serenade them every evening -from the Judas tree that shadows them. It was always -to them he sang, he cared not a jot for the other roses -in the garden.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: The rose-tree died of blight and -the nightingale of a broken heart the year you took the -veil.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: You are jesting!</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>He smiles, and she gives a little smile back at him.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: And so it is of roses and nightingales -that you ask tidings, and not of mother and -father or brothers! Well, it is always thus with exiles. -When I have lain fevered with my wounds very far -from Old Castille, it has been for the river that flows at -the foot of our orchard I have yearned, or for the -green <i>Vega</i> dotted with brown villages and stretching -away towards the <i>Sierra</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_285"></a>[285]</span></p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I am not an exile.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: An exile is one who is far from -home.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: This is my home.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: And do you never yearn for -your other one?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: My <i>other</i> one? Ah, yes!</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: By that you mean Paradise?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Yes.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: And so you long for Paradise?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: With a great longing.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: I sometimes <i>dream</i> of Paradise.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: And how does it show in your dreams?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>smiling a little</i>): I fear it is -mightily like what the <i>trovares</i>—<i>not</i> the monks—tell us -of hell.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>severely</i>): Then it must be a dream sent -you by a fiend of the Moorish Paradise, which is indeed -hell.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: That may be. And how does -it show in <i>your</i> dreams?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: A great, cool, columned, empty hall, -and I feel at once small and vast and shod with the -wind. And all the while I am aware that the coolness -and vastness and spaciousness of the hall and my body’s -lightness is because there is no sin.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: But what can you know of sin -in a nunnery?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> looks at him suspiciously, but his -expression remains impenetrable.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Well?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: You must know ... ’tis the scandal -of Christendom ... the empty vows of the religious. -Yet when all’s said, ’tis better here than out in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_286"></a>[286]</span> -world; we <i>do</i> live under rule, and mark the day by -singing the Hours (<i>gazing in front of her as if at some -vision</i>). Just over there, perhaps across that hill, or -round that bend of the road, a cool, rain-washed world, -trees, oxen, men, women, children, thin and transparent, -as if made of crystal.... I always held I -would suddenly come upon it. (<i>Passionately</i>) Oh, I am -so weary of the glare and dust of sin! Everything is -heavy and savourless and confined.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Always?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Yes ... except when I eat Christ in -the Eucharist.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: And then?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Then there is vastness and peace.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: That must be a nun’s communion. -When I eat Our Lord I am filled with a great -pity for His sufferings on Calvary which the Mass commemorates. -There have been times when having eaten -Him on the field of battle, my comrades and I, the -tears have rained down our cheeks, and from our pity -has sprung an exceeding great rage against the infidel -dogs who deny His divinity, and in that day’s battle -it goes ill with them. And when I eat Him in times of -peace, I am filled with a longing to fall upon the Morería, -a sword in one hand, a burning brand in the other.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p>(<i>Pause.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: It is already very late ... for nuns. -What is the weighty news you bring me?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Why, the marriage of your -sister Violante!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>coldly</i>): And was it for that I was -dragged from the dorter?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: I had sworn to acquaint you -with the news ... and to-morrow I leave Seville.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_287"></a>[287]</span></p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>relenting</i>): And you are well acquainted -with Don Manuel de Lara?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>gives a start</i>): Don Manuel de -Lara? Ah, yes ... we are of the same country and -the same age. We were suckled by one foster-mother, -we yawned over one Latin primer, and gloated over the -same tales of chivalry. We learned to ride the same -horse, to fly the same hawk; we were dubbed knight -by the same stroke of the sword—we love the same -lady.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>amazed</i>): <i>You</i> love my sister Violante?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Yes, I love your sister Violante -... and your mother that carried you in her womb, -and your father that begat you. (<i>Violently</i>) By the -rood, I am sick of mummery! <i>I</i> am Don Manuel de Lara.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: You?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Yes, I——</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Then you are not the son of my father’s -cousin?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: No.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I ... I am all dumbfounded ... -I ...</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: I will make it clear. On -Tuesday night I heard your talk with Sister Assumcion.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>in horror</i>): Oh!...</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: I was the man behind the wall -whom you justly named the worst kind of would-be -adulterer, and....</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I have no further words for Sister -Assumcion’s lover.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: <i>I</i> am not Sister Assumcion’s -lover. The moon has already set and risen, the sun -risen and set on his dead body.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>haughtily</i>): I am not an old peasant -woman that you should seek to please me with riddles.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: I will read you the riddle.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_288"></a>[288]</span> -Some weeks ago I had business—sent from the Alcazar -on a matter pertaining to some herbs—with that old -hag Trotaconventos. And through what motive I -cannot say, she waxed exceeding eloquent on the -charms of Sister Assumcion. We are taught in the -Catechism that the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the -ears, are gates by which either fiends or angels may -enter.... Well, her words entered my ears and set -fire to a great, dry heap of old dreams, old memories, -old hopes ... (strange! these are the <i>trovar’s</i> words!) -piled high on my heart. I became a flame.... You -are of the South, you have never seen a fire consuming -a sun-parched <i>vega</i> in the North. Well, a fire must -work its will, and, devouring all that blocks its path—flowers, -towers, men—drive forward to its secret -bourne. Who knows the bourne of fire? I obtained -speech with Sister Assumcion; it takes many waters -to quench a great fire, but the wind can alter its course. -I heard a voice and strange, passionate words ... -the course of the fire was altered, but still it drives on, -still it consumes.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>in a small, cold voice</i>): Well?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Well? And is it well? My -God! Well, a <i>trovar</i> from France who had entered your -convent disguised as a friar obtained from Trotaconventos -this key, which I likewise desired, first because -it opens this postern, secondly because ... toys are -apt to take for me a vast significance and swell out -with all the potencies of my happiness in this world, -my salvation in the next, and thus it happened with -this key; the fire rushed on, I killed the <i>trovar</i> and took -the key!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>horror-stricken</i>): You <i>killed</i> him?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Yes ... and would have killed -a thousand such for the key ... a low, French <i>jongleur</i>! -The world is all the better for his loss. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_289"></a>[289]</span> -dog! Daring to think he could seduce the nuns of -Spain!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Well?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: The rest is told in few words. -My madness over (for that night I was mad) the key -in my hands, counsel returned to me, and showed me -that it was not only through the key I could win to -your convent ... it is dreams that open only to this -key; strange dreams I only know in fragments ... -and I minded me of an <i>exemplum</i> told by the king -Don Sancho, in his book, of a knight that craved to talk -with a nun, and to affect the same, feigned to be her -kinsman. The night I was the other side this wall and -you were taunting Sister Assumcion, you named yourself -a Guzman whose mother was a Perez. I had but -to go to a herald and learn from him all the particulars -pertaining to the family of Perez y Guzman.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: You wished to have speech with me?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Yes.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Why?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: I have already said that no -one knows the bourne of fire.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>scornfully</i>): The bourne of fire! The -bourne rather of ... I’ll not soil my lips with the -word. Let me reduce your “fires,” and “lyres,” and -“moons” to plain, cold words; having wearied of Sister -Assumcion, you thought you’d sample another nun—one -maybe taking a greater stretch of arm to reach; -like children with figs—a bite out of one, then flung -away, then scrambling for another on a higher branch, -that in its turn it, too, may be bitten and thrown. Or, -maybe, Sister Assumcion found the <i>trovar</i> more to her -taste than you ... yes, I have it! <i>I</i> am to bring a -little balm to Sister Assumcion’s discarded lover!</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>eagerly</i>): Oh, lady, very light -of ... lady, it is not so. Maybe thus it shows, but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_290"></a>[290]</span> -in your heart of hearts you know right well it is not so. -I am a grievous sinner, but my soul is not light nor is -my heart shallow ... and I think already you know ’tis -so. Listen; I could have continued feigning to be your -kinsman and thus I could have come again to speak -with you, and all would have gone well; but your -presence gave me a loathing of my deceit, so I stripped -me of my lies and stand naked at your mercy. As -to Sister Assumcion ... the old hag’s words, when -she spoke of her, mated with my dreams and engendered -<i>you</i> in my heart, yes, <i>you</i>; and I had but to hear the -other’s voice and hearken to her words to know that -I had been duped and that she was not you. I swear -by God Almighty, by the duty I owe to my liege-lord, -by my order of chivalry, that I speak the truth.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Well, suppose it true, what then?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: What then? I have burned -my boats and I shall go ... where? And you will -to your dorter and be summoned by the cock to matins, -and it will all be as a dream (<i>in a voice of agony</i>). No! -No! By all the height and depth of God’s mercy it -cannot be thus! The stars have never said that of all -men I should be the most miserable. Can you see no -pattern traced behind all this? Sin? Aye, sin.... -But I verily believe that God loves sinners. But why -do I speak of sin? You say sin is everywhere; tell -me, do you see sin’s shadow lying between us two to-night? -Speak! You do not answer. Who knows? -It may be that for the first time we have stumbled on -the track that leads to Paradise. Angels are abroad -... fiends, too, it may be ... but I am not a light -man. <i>Ex utero ante luciferum amavi te</i> ... ’tis not -thus the words run, but they came.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: You speak wildly. What do you want -of me?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: What do I want?... <i>Magna<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_291"></a>[291]</span> -opera Domini</i> ... why does the psalter run in my -head?... Great are the works of the Lord ... the -sun is a great work, but so is shade from the sun; and -the moon is a great work, giving coolness and dreams, -and air to breathe is a great work, and so is water to -lave our wounds and slake our throats ... I believe -all the works of the Lord are found in you.... I -could ... oh, God!... Where? Lady, remember -I have the key, and every evening at sundown I shall -be here ... waiting. It is a vow.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> slowly moves away.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Lady Maria! Lady Maria!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>stopping</i>): She is dead. Do you speak -to Sister Pilar?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Yes, that is she, Sister Pilar. -Listen: receive absolution; communicate; be very -instant in prayer; make deep obeisance to the images -of Our Lady. Say many Paters and Aves, and through -the watches of the night, pray for the dead.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>in a frightened voice</i>): For the dead?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Aye, the dead ... that defend -virginity.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>very coldly</i>): All this has ever been my -custom, as a nun, without your admonition.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Good-night.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p>(<i>Pause.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>almost inaudibly</i>): Good-night.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_292"></a>[292]</span></p> - -<h4>ACT III</h4> - -<h5>SCENE I</h5> - -<div class="scene"> - -<p><i>A week later. The Chapel of the Convent of San -Miguel. <span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> kneels in the Confessional, -where <span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span> is receiving -penitents.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: I ask your blessing, father. I -confess to Almighty God, and to you, father....</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Well, daughter—Ten Commandments, -Seven Deadly Sins. What of the Second Commandment, -which we break whensoever we follow after -vanities?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Yes, father. I have not foregone -blackening my eyes with kohl ... and I have -procured me a crimson scarf the dye of which comes off -on the lips ... and ... the pittance I got at Easter -I have expended upon perfumes.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Ever the same tale, daughter! -As I have told you many a time before, civet and musk -make the angels hold their noses, as though they were -passing an open grave, and a painted woman makes -them turn aside their eyes; but ’tis God Himself that -turns away His eyes when the painted woman is a nun. -The Second Commandment is ever a stumbling-block -to you, daughter, and so is the Sixth, for in God’s sight -he who commits the deadly sin of Rage breaks that -commandment; admit, daughter!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Yes, father; during the singing -of None, I did loudly rate Sister Ines and boxed her -ears.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Shame on you, daughter! Why -did you thus?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_293"></a>[293]</span></p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Because she had spewed out -on my seat the sage she had been chewing to -clean her teeth after dinner, and, unwittingly, I sat -on it.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: And do you not know that a stained -habit is less ungracious in the eyes of God than a soul -stained with rage against a sister and with irreverence -of His holy service?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Yes, father.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Well, for your concupiscence, rage, -and unmannerliness: seven penitential psalms with -the Litany on Fridays, and a fare of bread and water -on the Fridays of this month. There still remains the -Tenth Commandment and the deadly sin of Envy; I -mind me in the past you have been guilty of Envy ... -towards more virtuous and richer sisters.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Silence.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>sternly</i>): Daughter, admit!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Father, I....</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Daughter, admit!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: It may be ... a little ... -Sister Pilar.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Aha! Envious of Sister Pilar! -And wherein did you envy her?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Silence.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Daughter, admit!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: I have envied her, father, but ... -the matter touches her more than me.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: You have envied her. Envy is a -deadly sin; if I’m to give you Absolution I must know -more of the matter.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: I have envied her in that ...<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_294"></a>[294]</span> -well, in that she was a Guzman ... and ... and has -a room to herself, and a handsome dowry....</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Doubtless you envy her for these -things; but ... I seem to detect a particular behind -these generals. Touching what particular matter during -these past days have you envied Sister Pilar?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Silence.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Daughter, admit!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Oh, father ... ’tis she that is -involved ... I....</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Daughter, admit!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: There was a man ... it was -Trotaconventos ... all he asked was a few words -with me, no more ... nothing ... nothing unseemly -passed between us ... and then he flouted -me ... and then he came bearing a letter and saying -he was a kinsman of Sister Pilar.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Come, daughter, your confession -is like a peasant’s tale—it begins in the middle and -has no end. Why should you envy Sister Pilar this -kinship?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Silence.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Daughter, it is a dire and awful -thing to keep back aught in the Confessional; admit.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: He was not her kinsman, as it -happens, and ... even had he been....</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>eagerly</i>): Well?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Father ... pray....</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: I begin to understand; your -foolish, vain, envious heart was sore that this knight -treated you coldly, and you have dared to dream that -that most virtuous and holy lady, Sister Pilar....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_295"></a>[295]</span></p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>hotly</i>): Dreaming? Had you -been in the orchard last evening, and seen what I -saw, you would not speak of dreaming!</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>breathlessly</i>): What did you -see?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Silence.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: You have gone too far, daughter, -to turn back now. I must hear all.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Well, last evening, just before -Compline, I went down to the orchard to breathe the -cool air; and there I came upon Sister Pilar and this -knight; but they were so deep in talk they did not -perceive me, so I hid behind a tree and listened.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Well?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Well, he is, I think, clean mad, -and she, too, is of a most fantastical conceit; and sometimes -their words seemed empty of all sense and meaning, -but sometimes it was as clear as day—little loving -harping upon foolishness and little tricks of speech or -manner, as it might be a country lad and lass wooing -at a saints’ shrine: “there again!” “what?” “You -burred your R like a child whose mouth is full of -chestnuts.” “Nay, I did not!” “Why, yes, I say -you did!” And then a great silence fell on them, she -with her eyes downcast, he devouring her with his, and -the air seemed too heavy for them even to draw their -breath; then up she started, and trembled from head -to foot, and fled to the house.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: But ... but ... yes; thank -you, daughter ... I mean, six paters daily for a -fortnight. (<i>Gabbles mechanically</i>): Dominus noster -Jesus Christus te absolvat: et ego auctoritate ipsius te -absolvo ab omni vinculo excommunicationis et interdicti -in quantum possum, et tu indiges. Deinde ego te<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_296"></a>[296]</span> -absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et -Spiritus Sancti. Amen.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> crosses herself, rises and -leaves the Confessional. After a few seconds, <span class="smcap">Sister -Pilar</span> enters it.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I ask your blessing, father. I confess -to Almighty God, and to you, father....</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Well?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I unwittingly omitted the <i>dipsalma</i> -between two verses in choir, father.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Yes, yes ... what else?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Last Sunday I chewed the Host with -my back teeth instead of with my front.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Yes, yes, yes; small sins of omission -and negligence ... what else?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: That is all, father.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: All you have to confess?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: All, father.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: But ... but ... this is ... -daughter, you <i>dare</i> to come to me with a Saint’s confession? -Bethink you of your week’s ride, ten stone -walls to be cleared clean, seven pits from which to keep -your horse’s hoofs ... not one of the Ten Commandments -broken, daughter? Not one of the Seven -Deadly Sins upon your conscience?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: No, father.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: But ... beware ... most -solemnly do I conjure you to beware of withholding -aught in the Confessional.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Silence.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Well, I shall question you. On -what have you meditated by day?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_297"></a>[297]</span></p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: On many things; all lovely.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Of what have you dreamed o’ -nights?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Of godly matters, cool cathedrals, and -Jacob’s ladder.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Of man?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Silence.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>threateningly</i>): Daughter! Admit!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Sometimes ... I ... have dreamed -of man.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Of <i>a</i> man?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Of a monk dwelling in the same community -who has sometimes knelt at the altar by my -side to receive the Lord.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: But this is not a mixed community.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: No, father.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: What of this monk, then?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: You asked me, father, of my dreams.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: And had this monk of dreams the -features of a living man?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Yes, father.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>hoarsely</i>): Whose?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Sometimes they were the features of my -father ... one night of an old Basque gardener we -had in my home when I was a child.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Pooh! Daughter, you are holding -something back.... Beware! What of your allegory -of the little stone the giant could not move?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I have confessed <i>all my sins</i>.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Daughter, I refuse to give you -Absolution.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> crosses herself, rises, and goes out -of the chapel. <span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span> leaves the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_298"></a>[298]</span> -confessional looking pale and tormented; he is -accosted by <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span>, who has been sitting -waiting.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: A word with you, Don Jaime.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Anon, anon, good dame. I have -pressing business in the town.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Your business can wait, but not my -words. They touch Sister Pilar. (<i>He starts violently -and looks at her expectantly.</i>) You see, you will not to -your business till I am done with you ... just one -little word to bind you to my will! And in that I ever -know the little word that will make men hurrying to -church or market stand still as you are doing now, or -else if they be standing still to run like zebras: they -call me a witch.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Yes, yes, but you said you had -... a word ... touching ... for my ear.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: And so I have, Don Jaime; I am -making my soul. A hard job, your eyes say. Well, -with my brushes and ointments I can make the complexion -of a brown witch as fair as a lily, I can make -an old face slough its wrinkles like a snake its skin in -spring; and who knows what true penitence will not -do to my soul?</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Good dame, I beseech you, to -business!</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: And is not the saving of my soul -business, if you please?</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Yes, your confessor’s ... in -truth, dame, I am much pressed for time.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: And yet, though time, or the lack -of him, expresses all the marrow from your bones, -because of that little name you cannot move till I have -said my say. Is it true that St. Mary Magdalene was -once a bawd and a maker of cosmetics?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_299"></a>[299]</span></p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>with weary resignation</i>): Aye.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: And did you ever hear that she sold -her daughter to a Jew, and that daughter a nun?</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>in horror</i>): Never!</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: But if she had, would her tears of -penitence have washed it out?</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Yes, if she had confessed it and -done penance.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: And what is more, become herself a -scourge of sinners and saved the souls of two innocent -babes for the Church?</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: Yes, thus would she have acquired -merit.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Well, I have brought as many maids -to bed that multiplied by ten you will have baptised -and buried when you are three score years and ten.... -Why! it is no more to me than it was to my old father, -who owned some land Carmona way, to take a heifer -to bull. In truth, if Don Love still reigned in heaven -and had not fallen with Satan into hell, your children’s -children would be praying to <i>Saint</i> Trotaconventos that -she would send them kisses and ribbons and moonless -nights; my bones would be lying under the altar of -some parish church, and two of my teeth in a fine golden -reliquary would cure maids of pimples, lads of warts. -All that lies very lightly on my soul ... but there -are other things ... and ... (<i>looking round furtively</i>) -these nights I’ve sometimes wished for a dog that I -might hear his snore.... What if before she died -Trotaconventos should be re-christened Convent-Scourge? -I have learned ... oh, one of my trade needs -must have as many eyes as the cow-herd of the Roman -dame, I forget what the <i>trovares</i> call her, and as many -ears as eyes ... that a certain nun of this convent -... you grow restive? Why, then, once more I must -whisper the magic name and root you to the ground.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_300"></a>[300]</span> -<i>Sister Pilar</i> is deep in an <i>amour</i> with a knight of the -Court ... an overbearing, vain, foolish man against -whom I bear a grudge. And Trotaconventos means, -before she dies, on one nun at least in place of opening, -to shut the convent gate; nay, to bring her to her -knees and penitence. Well, what think you?</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: There is some dark thought -brooding in your heart, and, unlike the crow, I deem it -will hatch out acts black as itself,<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> but the whiteness -of her virtue will not be soiled.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: And is Sister Pilar too firmly settled -in her niche to topple down? Yet how she laughs at -you! Why, I have heard her say that you are neither -man nor priest, but just a bundle of hay dressed up in -a soutane, whose head is a hollow pumpkin holding a -burning candle, to frighten boors and children with -death and judgment on the eve of All Souls.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>hotly</i>): She said that? When?</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Why, I cannot mind me of the date; -she has used you so often as a strop for sharpening her -tongue. But let me unfold my plan. Maybe you know -I am ever in and out of the Alcazar with draughts and -oils and unguents ... and other toys that shall be -nameless ... for Doña Maria. Poor soul! The fiends -torment her, too, and she clutches at aught that may -serve as atonement. I told her the story, and she was -all agog to be the instrument for restoring the good -name to the convents of Seville. She thanked me -kindly for my communication, and sent her <i>camarero</i> -to fetch me a roll of Malaga silk, and then she went to -Don Pedro feigning ignorance of the knight’s name—for, -next to his carbuncle, Don Pedro puts his faith in -the strong right arm of Don Manuel de Lara—told him -the tale, and wheedled from him a writ signed with the -royal seal, the name to be filled in when she had learned<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_301"></a>[301]</span> -it, for he is very jealous of the right which it seems -alone among the Kings of Christendom is his—to punish -infringements of canon, as well as of civil law. I have -the writ, and towards sundown I shall come to the -convent orchard with three alguaciles<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> to tear the -canting Judas from his lady’s arms.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>in horror</i>): Her arms? Nay, not -that....</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Why, yes; her arms and lips. Come, -come, Sir Priest, think you it is with the feet and nose -lovers embrace?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span> continues to gaze at her in -horror.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>chuckling</i>): Oh, well I know the clerks -of your kidney! Your talk would bring a blush to -a bawd, and you’ll hold your sides and smack your lips -over French fables and the like; but when it comes to -flesh and hot blood and <i>doing</i>, you’ll draw down your -upper lip, turn up your eyes, and cry, “But it’s not -true. It cannot be!” Come, pull yourself together—’tis -you must be the fowler of the nun.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>starting</i>): I?</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: You.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i>: But the discipline of nuns lies -with the Chapter.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Yes, yes, but, ’tis the common -talk of Seville that the Prioress here is too busy -with little hounds and apes and flutings and silk -veils to care for discipline ... you’ll not get her -wetting her slashed shoes in the orchard dew. You, -the chaplain of this house, must meet me to-night -outside the orchard’s postern to catch the nun red-handed -and drag her before the Prioress.... Ah!<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302"></a>[302]</span> -to-night you’ll see whether it be only in songs and -tales and little lewd painted pictures that folks know -how to kiss!</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>violently</i>): I’ll not be there!</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Not there? Why, Sister Pilar -spoke truly: “neither man nor priest”—not man -enough to take vengeance on his spurner, not priest -enough to chastise a sinner.</p> - -<p><i>Jaime Rodriguez</i> (<i>in a fury of despair</i>): Ah! I will -be there.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>He rushes from the chapel. <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span> -looks after him, a slow smile spreading over her face, -and she nods her head with satisfaction. Enter -<span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span>.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Aha! my little pigeon, how goes the -world? Has my lotion cured that little roughness on -your cheek? Come, my beauty, let me feel (<i>she draws -her hand down her cheek</i>). Why, yes, it’s as smooth and -satiny as a queen-apple (<i>makes a scornful exclamation</i>). -And so that lantern-jawed Knight prefers Sister Whey -to Sister Cream! Well, he’ll get well churned for his -pains. Oh, the nasty Templar come to life ... oh, -the pompous fool, marching with solemn gait like -a lord abbot frowning over a great paunch because, -forsooth, he has swallowed the moon and she has dissolved -into humours in his belly! Oh ... oh ... -with “good dame, do this,” and “good dame, do that,” -as though I were his slave ... ’tis sweet when duty -and vengeance chime together. (<i>Looking maliciously at -Sister Assumcion.</i>) Spurned, too, by the pretty French -<i>trovar</i>! Why, it is indeed a deserted damsel! Oh, -you needn’t blush and toss your head; when I was of -your age and your complexion, I could land a fish as -well as throw a line. (<i>Melting.</i>) Never mind, poor<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_303"></a>[303]</span> -poppet, you were wise in that you came to me with your -tale of Don Joseph and my lady Susannah for once -caught napping ... and that in each other’s arms. -I have devised a pretty vengeance which I will unfold to -you. Aye! you’ll see that proud white Guzman without -her black veil, last in choir for the rest of her days, -and every week going barefoot round the cloister while -the Prioress drubs her! And the sallow knight who -thought my cream had turned when it was but his own -sour stomach ... he’ll have to sell his Moorish loot to -buy waxen tapers, and be beaten round all the churches -of Seville ... may I live to see the day! Never was -there a sweeter medicine whereby to save one’s soul, -than vengeance on one’s foes. (<i>She pauses for a few -seconds, and a strange light comes into her eyes.</i>) Don -Juan Tenorio, I have made my choice—I fight with the -dead. (<i>shakes her fist at the audience</i>) Arrogant, flaunting -youth! Beauty! Hot blood! From the brink -of the grave Trotaconventos threatens you.</p> - -<h5>SCENE II</h5> - -<div class="scene"> - -<p><i>The evening of the same day. The convent orchard. -<span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> and <span class="smcap">Don Manuel de Lara</span> are lying -locked in each other’s arms. She extricates herself -and sits up.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>very slowly</i>): You ... have ... -ravished ... me.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>triumphantly</i>): Yes, eyes of -my heart; I have unlocked your sweet body.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p>(<i>Pause.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_304"></a>[304]</span></p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Strange! Has my prayer been answered? -And by whom?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: What prayer, beloved?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: That night you were the other side of the -wall, I prayed that I might behold the woof without the -warp of sin, a still, quiet, awful world, and all the winds -asleep. (<i>Very low.</i>) <span class="allsmcap">IT</span> was like that. (<i>Springing to -her feet.</i>) Christ Jesus! Blessed Virgin! Guardian -angel, where was your sword? I, a nun, a bride of -Christ, I have been ravished. I am fallen lower than -the lowest woman of the town, I have forfeited my -immortal soul. (<i>Sobbing, she sinks down again beside -<span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span>, and lays her head on his shoulder.</i>) -Beloved! Why have you brought me to this? -Why, my beloved?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>caressing her</i>): Hush, little -love, hush! Your body is small and thin ... hush!</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: But how came it to fall out thus? -Why?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Because there was something -stronger than the angels, than all the hosts of the -dead.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: What?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: I cannot say ... something -... I feel it—yet, where are these words? They have -suddenly come to me: <i>amor morte fortior</i>—against love -the dead whose aid you, and I, too, invoked, cannot -prevail.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>shuddering</i>): Yet the dead kept Sister -Assumcion from her <i>trovar</i>.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Their souls were barques too -light to be freighted with love; for it is very heavy.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: And so they did not sink.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Who can tell if lightness of -soul be not the greatest sin of all? And as to us ... -the proverb says the paths that lead to God are infinite<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_305"></a>[305]</span> -... beloved, I feel.... Something holy is with us -to-day.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Fiends, fiends, wearing the weeds of -angels.... (<i>Groans.</i>)</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Rest, small love ... there, -I’ll put my cloak for your head. Why is your body so -thin and small?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>her eyes fixed in horror</i>): I cannot believe -that it is really so. A week since, yesterday, an hour -since, I ... was ... a ... a ... virgin, and now -... can God wipe out the past?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Nay ... nor would I have -Him do so.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Beloved ... we have sinned ... -most grievously.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: What is sin? I would seem -to have forgotten. What is sin, beloved? Be my -herald and read me his arms.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Death ... I have said that before -... ah, yes, to the <i>trovar</i> ... death, death....</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: With us is neither sin nor -death. You yourself said that during <span class="allsmcap">IT</span> sin vanished.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Yes ... so it seemed ... (<i>almost -inaudibly</i>) ’twas what I feel, only ten times multiplied, -when I eat Christ in the Eucharist.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Hush, beloved, hush! You -are speaking wildly.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Oh! what did I say? Yes, they were -wild words.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p>(<i>Pause.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Do you know, we are in the octave of -the Feast of Corpus Christi? I seem to have fallen -from the wheel of the Calendar to which I have been -tied all my life ... saints, apostles, virgins, martyrs, -rolled round, rolled round, year after year ... like<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_306"></a>[306]</span> -the Kings and Popes and beggars on the Wheel of -Fortune in my mother’s book of Hours. Yes, beloved, -we have fallen off the wheel and are lying stunned in -its shadow among the nettles and deadly night-shade; -but above us, creaking, creaking, the old wheel turns. -It may be we are dead ... are we dead, beloved?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Through the trees <span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> is heard -shouting, “Sister Pilar! Sister Pilar!” <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> -starts violently and once more springs to her feet. -<span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> appears running towards them.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>breathlessly</i>): Quick! Quick! -Not a moment ... they’ll be here! I cannot ... -quick! (<i>She presses her hand to her side in great agitation</i>).</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: What is all this? Speak, lady.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Trotaconventos ... Don Jaime -... the <i>alguaciles</i>.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Take your time, lady. When -you have recovered your breath you will tell us what -all this portends.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Away! Away! Trotaconventos -has been to Don Pedro ... she has a writ against you -... the <i>alguaciles</i> will take you to prison ... and -Don Jaime comes to catch Sister Pilar ... fly! fly! -ere ’tis too late.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>dully</i>): Caught up again on the wheel -... death’s wheel, and it will crush us.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>shaking her</i>): Rouse yourself, -sister! You yet have time.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: We are together, beloved ... -do you fear?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: No ... I neither fear, nor hope, nor -breathe.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Mad, both of them! I tell you, -they come with the <i>alguaciles</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_307"></a>[307]</span></p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: And if they came with all the -hosts of Christendom and Barbary, yet should you -see what you will see. I have a key, and I could lock -the postern, but I’ll not do so. (<i>He picks up his sword, -girds it on, and draws it.</i>) Why ... all the Spring -flows in my veins to-day.... I am the Spring. What -man can fight the Spring?</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Sound of voices and hurrying steps outside the -postern. <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span>, <span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span>, -and three alguaciles come rushing in. <span class="smcap">Sister -Assumcion</span> shrieks.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: There, my brave lads, I told you! -Caught in the act ... the new Don Juan Tenorio and -his veiled concubine!</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Silence, you filthy, bawdy -hag! (<i>glares at her.</i>) Here stand I, Don Manuel de Lara, -and here stands a very noble lady of Spain and a bride -of Christ, and here is my sword. Who will lay hands on -us? You, Don Priest, pallid and gibbering? You, vile -old woman, whose rotten bones need but a touch to -crumble to dust and free your black soul for hell? -You ... (<i>his eyes rest on the alguaciles</i>). Why! By -the rood ... ’tis Sancho and Domingo and Pedro! -Old comrades, you and I, beneath the rain of heaven -and of Moorish arrows have buried our dead; we have -sat by the camp-fire thrumming our lutes or capping -riddles (<i>laughs</i>). How does it go? “I am both hot -and cold, and fish swim in me without my being a -river,” and the answer is a frying-pan ... and in the -cold dawn of battle we have kneeled side by side and -eaten God’s Body.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>The alguaciles smile sheepishly and stand shuffling -their feet.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_308"></a>[308]</span></p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: At him! At him, good lads! -What is his sword to your three knives and cudgels? -Remember, you carry a warrant with Don Pedro’s seal.</p> - -<p><i>Sancho</i> (<i>dubiously</i>): ’Tis true, captain, we carry a -royal warrant for your apprehension.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: At him! At him!</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: At me then! Air! Fire! -Water! A million million banners of green leaves! A -mighty army of all the lovers who have ever loved! -Come, then, and fight them in me! <i>You</i>, too, were there -that day when the whole army saw the awful ærial -warrior before whom the Moors melted like snow ... -what earthly arrows could pierce his star-forged mail? -I, too, have been a journey to the stars. I wait! -At me!</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>The alguaciles stand as if hypnotised.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: Rouse yourselves, you fools! Oh, -he’s a wonder with his stars and his leaves. Why, on -his own showing, he is but a tumbler at a fair in a suit -of motley covered with spangles, or a Jack-in-the-green -at a village May-day. Come to your senses, good -fellows; we can’t stay here all night.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Sancho, hand me that warrant.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: No! No! You fool!</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Without a word <span class="smcap">Sancho</span> hands the warrant to -<span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span>, who reads it carefully through.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Sir Priest! I see you carry -quill and ink-horn.... I fain would borrow them of -you.</p> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i>: No! No! Do not trust him, Don -Jaime.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>impatiently</i>): Come, Sir Priest.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_309"></a>[309]</span></p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span> obeys him in silence. <span class="smcap">Don -Manuel</span> makes an erasure in the warrant and writes -in words in its place.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>handing the warrant to Sancho</i>): -There, Sancho, I have made a little change ... you’ll -not go home with an empty bag, after all. (<i>Pointing -to Jaime Rodriguez.</i>) There stands your quarry, looking -like a sleep-walker ... to gaol with him ... until -his arch-priest gets him out ... ’twill make a good -fable, “which tells of a Prying Clerk and how he cut -himself on his own sharpness.”</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>The alguaciles, chuckling, seize <span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span> -and bind him, he staring all the time as if in a dream.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Trotaconventos</i> (<i>stamping</i>): You fools! You fools! -And <i>you</i> (<i>turning to <span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span></i>) ... you’ll lose your -frenzied head for tampering with Don Pedro’s seal.</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Nay, I’d not lose it if I tampered -with his carbuncle ... he is menaced by shadows -and I fight them for him. Nor, on my honour as a -Knight, shall one hair of the head of Sancho and Pedro -and Domingo there suffer for this. But <i>you</i> ... you -heap of dung outside the city’s wall, you stench of dogs’ -corpses, devastating plague ... <i>you</i> shall die ... -not by my sword, however (<i>draws his dagger and stabs -Trotaconventos</i>). Away with her and your other quarry, -Sancho ... good-day, old comrades ... here’s to -drink my health (<i>throws them a purse</i>).</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Sancho</span> and <span class="smcap">Pedro</span> lift up the dying <span class="smcap">Trotaconventos</span>, -<span class="smcap">Domingo</span> leads off <span class="smcap">Jaime Rodriguez</span> and -exeunt. <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> stands motionless, pale, and -wide-eyed, <span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span> has collapsed sobbing -with terror on the ground. <span class="smcap">Don Manuel de Lara<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_310"></a>[310]</span></span> -stands for a few moments motionless, then quietly -walks to the postern and locks it with the key, returns, -and again stands motionless; then suddenly his eyes -blaze and he throws out his arms.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i> (<i>loudly and triumphantly</i>): His -truth shall compass thee with a shield: thou shalt not -be afraid for the terror by the night. For the arrow that -flieth in the day, for the plague that walketh in the -darkness: for the assault of the evil one in the noon-day. -A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand -at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. -The dead, the dead ... they melted like snow before -the Spring ... my beloved!</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Pause. Beyond the orchard wall there is heard -the tinkling of a bell, and a voice calling, “Make way -for el Señor! Way for el Señor!”</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i> (<i>sobbing</i>): They are carrying the -Host to Trotaconventos.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>All three kneel down and cross themselves. The -sound of the bell and the cry of “el Señor” grow fainter -and fainter in the distance; when it can be heard -no more, they rise. <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> draws her hand -over her eyes, then opens them, blinking a little and -gazing round as if bewildered.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Yes ... Corpus Christi ... and then -Ascension ... and then Pentecost ... round and -round ... Hours ... el Señor wins in His Octave.... -Is He the living or the dead, Don Manuel?</p> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Beloved! What are you saying?</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: What am I saying? Something has -had a victory ... maybe the dead ... but the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_311"></a>[311]</span> -victory is not to you. (<i>Her eyes softening as she looks -at him.</i>) Beloved! (<i>makes a little movement as if shaking -something off</i>). First, I must finish my confession ... -the one I made this morning was sacrilege ... something -had blinded me. They say that in the Primitive -Church the penitents confessed one to other, so will I.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>She walks up to <span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span>, who is -crouching under a tree, her teeth chattering, and goes -down on her knees before her.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: I confess to Almighty God, and to you, -little sister, because I have sinned against you exceedingly, -in thought, word and deed (<i>she strikes her breast -three times</i>), through my fault, through my fault, -through my most grievous fault. You were wiser than -I, little sister, and knew me better than I knew myself. -I deemed my soul to be set on heavenly things, but -therein was I grievously mistaken. When I chid you -for wantonness, thinking it was zeal for the honour of -the house, it was naught, as you most truly said, but -envy of you, in that you gave free rein to your tongue -and your desires. And, though little did I wot of it, I -craved for the love of man as much as ever did you, nay, -more. Even that poor wretch, Don Jaime ... it was -as if I came more alive when I talked with him than -when I was in frater or in dorter with naught but -women. Then that poor <i>trovar</i> ... he gave me a -longing for the very things I did most condemn in talk -with him ... the merry rout of life, all noise and -laughter and busyness and perfumed women. Then -when he gazed at you as does a prisoner set free gaze at -the earth, my heart seemed to contract, my blood to -dry up, and I hated you. And then ... and then -... there came Don Manuel, and time seemed to cease, -eternity to begin. All my far-flown dreams came<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_312"></a>[312]</span> -crowding back to me like homing birds; envy, rage, -pride dropped suddenly dead, like winds in a great -calm at sea ... and that great calm was ... Lust.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span>, who has been standing motionless, -makes a movement of protest.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Yes ... Lust. Little sister, I verily -believe that in spite of foolishness and vanity, all the -sins of this community are venial ... excepting mine. -For I am Christ’s adulteress (<i><span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span> starts forward -with a stifled cry, but she checks him with upraised hand</i>), -a thing that Jezebel would have the right to spurn -with her foot ... yes, little sister, I, a bride of Christ, -have been ravished. (<i>Seizing her hands.</i>) Poor little -sister ... just a wild bird beating its wings against a -cage through venial longings for air and sun! I am not -worthy to loose the latchet of your shoe.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span>, who up to now has been -crying softly, at this point bursts into violent sobs.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Sister Assumcion</i>: Oh ... Sister ... ’tis I ... I -envied you first your fine furniture and sheets and ... -things ... and then the knight there ... spurning -me for you ... and I told Trotaconventos ... and -Don Jaime ... and it is all my doing ... and ’tis I -that crave forgiveness.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Hush, little sister, hush! (<i>Strokes her -hands.</i>) Sit quiet a little while and rest ... you have -been sadly shaken.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>Rises and silently confronts <span class="smcap">Don Manuel de Lara</span>.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: And what have you to say to me—my -beloved?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_313"></a>[313]</span></p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i>: Only that I fear my little sister and I -are late for Vespers.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>He falls on his knees and seizes the hem of her habit.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Don Manuel de Lara</i>: Oh, very soul of my soul! -White heart of hell wherein I must burn for all eternity! -I see it now ... we have been asleep and we have -wakened ... or, maybe, we have been awake and now -we have fallen asleep. Look! look at the evening -star caught in the white blossom—the tree’s cold, -virginal fruition (<i>springs to his feet</i>). Vespers ... the -Evening Star ... bells and stars and Hours, they are -leagued against me ... and yet I thought ... is it -the living or the dead? I cannot fight stars ... -wheels ... the Host ... Beloved, will you sometimes -dream of me? No need to answer, because I -know you will. Our dreams ... God exacts no levy -on our dreams ... the angels dare not touch them -... they are ours. First, heavy penance, then, maybe, -if I win forgiveness, the white habit of St. Bruno. -When you are singing Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, -Vespers, and Compline, I, too, shall be singing them—through -the long years. God is merciful and the -Church is the full granery of His Grace ... maybe He -will pardon us; but it will be for <i>your</i> soul that I shall -pray, not mine.</p> - -<p><i>Sister Pilar</i> (<i>almost inaudibly</i>): And I for yours ... -beloved. (<i>Turns towards <span class="smcap">Sister Assumcion</span></i>): Come, -little sister.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>They move slowly towards the Convent till they -vanish among the trees. <span class="smcap">Don Manuel</span> holds out -the key in front of him for a few seconds, gazing at it, -then unlocks the postern, goes out through it, shuts it, -and one can hear him locking it at the other side.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_314"></a>[314]</span></p> - -<h5>SCENE III</h5> - -<div class="scene"> - -<p><i>The Convent chapel. The nuns seated in their -stalls are singing Vespers.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p>Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O -Zion.</p> - -<p>For He hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; he -hath blessed thy children within thee.</p> - -<p>Who hath made peace in thy borders: and filled thee -with the fat of corn.</p> - -<p>Who sendeth forth His speech upon the earth: His -word runneth very swiftly.</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i><span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span>, as white as death, and <span class="smcap">Sister -Assumcion</span>, still sobbing, enter and take their places.</i></p> - -</div> - -<p>Who giveth snow like wool: He scattereth mist like -ashes.</p> - -<p>He sendeth His crystal like morsels: who shall stand -before the face of His cold?</p> - -<p>He shall send out His word and shall melt them: -His wind shall blow, and the waters shall run.</p> - -<p>Who declareth His word unto Jacob: His Justice -and judgments unto Israel.</p> - -<p>He hath not done in like manner to every nation: -and His judgement He hath not made manifest to them.</p> - -<p>The Lord, who putteth peace on the borders of the -Church, filleth us with the fat of wheat.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_315"></a>[315]</span></p> - -<p>Brethren: For I have received of the Lord that which -also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same -night in which He was betrayed, took bread, and giving -thanks, broke, and said: “Take ye and eat: this is -my body, which shall be delivered for you: this do for -the commemoration of me.”</p> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>They sing</i>:</p> - -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Pange, lingua, gloriósi,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Córporis mystérium,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sangúinisque pretiósi,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quem in mundi prétium</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fructus ventris generósi</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rex effudit géntium.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>During the singing of this hymn, <span class="smcap">Sister Pilar</span> -leaves her place in the choir and prostrates herself -before the altar.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Nobis datus, nobis natus</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ex intacta virgine,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et in mundo conversátus,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sparso verbi sémine,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sui moras incolátus</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Miro clausit órdine.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">In suprémæ nocte coenæ</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Recúmbens cum frátribus.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="stage-direction"> - -<p><i>The curtain, when there is one, should at this point -begin slowly to fall.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Observáta lege plene</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cibis in legalibus</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cibum turbæ duodénæ</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Se dat suis manibus.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_316"></a>[316]</span></p> - -<p class="tb">For a few seconds there was silence; and Teresa saw -several ladies exchanging amused, embarrassed glances.</p> - -<p>Then Harry could be heard saying, “Er ... er ... -er ... a piece ... er ... <span class="smcap">amazingly</span> well adapted -to its audience ... er ... er....” All turned round -in the direction of his voice, and some smiled. Then -again there was a little silence, till a gallant lady, -evidently finding the situation unbearable, came up -to Teresa and said, “Thrilling, my dear, thrilling! -But I’m afraid in places it’s rather too deep for me.”</p> - -<p>Then others followed her example. “What <i>is</i> an -auto-sacramentál, exactly?” “Oh, really! A knight -of the time of Pedro the Cruel? I always connected -Don Juan ... or how is it one ought to pronounce it? -Don Huan, is it? I always connected him with the -time of Byron, but I suppose that was absurd.” “I -liked the troubadour’s jolly red boots; are they what -are called Cossack boots? Oh, no, of course, that’s -Russian.”</p> - -<p>But it was clear they were all horribly embarrassed.</p> - -<p>The babies and children had, for some time, been -getting fretful; and now the babies were giving their -nerve-rending catcalls, the children their heart-rending -keening.</p> - -<p>In one of her moments of insight, Jollypot had said -that there is nothing that brings home to one so forcibly -the suffering involved in merely being alive as the -change that takes place in the cry of a child between -its first and its fourth year.</p> - -<p>But the children were soon being comforted with -buns; the babies with great, veined, brown-nippled -breasts, while Mrs. Moore, markedly avoiding any -member of the Lane family, moved about among her -women with pursed mouth.</p> - -<p>Then the actors appeared, still in their costumes, -and mingled with the other guests, drinking tea and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_317"></a>[317]</span> -chatting. The Doña, eyebrows quizzically arched, -came up to Teresa.</p> - -<p>“My dear child, what <i>were</i> you thinking of? Just -look at Mrs. Moore’s face! That, of course, makes up -for a lot ... but, still! And I do hope they won’t -think Spanish convents are like that nowadays.”</p> - -<p>Thank goodness! The Doña, at least, had not smelt -a rat.</p> - -<p>Then she saw Guy coming towards her; for some -reason or other, he looked relieved.</p> - -<p>“I wish to God Haines would make his people stylisize -their acting more—make them talk in more artificial -voices in that sort of play. They ought to speak like -the Shades in Homer; that would preserve the sense -of the Past. There’s nothing that can be so modern -as a voice.” He looked at her. “It’s funny ... -you know, it’s not the sort of thing one would have -expected you to write. It has a certain gush and exuberance, -but it’s disgustingly pretty ... it really is, -Teresa! Of course, one does get thrills every now -and then, but I’m not sure if they’re legitimate ones—for -instance, in the last scene but one, when Don Manuel -becomes identified with the Year-Spirit.”</p> - -<p>So <i>that</i> was it! He had feared that, according to -his own canons, it would be much better than it was; -hence his look of relief. She had a sudden vision of -what he had feared a thing written by her would be -like—something black and white, and slightly mathematical; -dominoes, perhaps, which, given that the -simple rule is observed that like numbers must be placed -beside like, can follow as eccentric a course as the -players choose, now in a straight line, now zigzagging, -now going off at right angles, now again in a straight -line; a sort of visible music. And, indeed, that line of -ivory deeply indentured with the strong, black dots -would be like the design, only stronger and clearer, made<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_318"></a>[318]</span> -by an actual page of music; like that in a portrait -she had once seen by Degas of a lady standing by a -piano.</p> - -<p>But she felt genuinely glad that her play should -have achieved this, at least, that one person should feel -happier because of it; and she was quite sincere when -she said, “Well, Guy, it’s an ill wind, you know.”</p> - -<p>He grew very red. “I haven’t the least idea what -you mean,” he said angrily.</p> - -<p>After that, Concha came up, and was very warm in -her congratulations. Did she guess? If she did, she -would rather die than show that she did. Teresa began -to blush, and it struck her how amused Concha must -be feeling, if she <i>had</i> guessed, at the collapse of Sister -Assumcion’s love affairs, and at the final scene between -Pilar and Assumcion—Pilar’s noble self-abasement, -Assumcion’s confession of her own inferiority.</p> - -<p>And David? He kept away from her, and she -noticed that he was very white, and that his expression -was no longer buoyant.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_319"></a>[319]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</h2> - -</div> - -<p>That evening Teresa got no word alone with David.</p> - -<p>The next morning at breakfast it was proposed that -Dick, Concha and Rory, and Arnold, should motor -to the nearest links, play a round or two, and have -luncheon at the clubhouse; and David asked if he -might go with them to “caddy.”</p> - -<p>Harry and Guy had to leave by an early train.</p> - -<p>The day wore on; and Teresa noticed that the Doña -kept looking at her anxiously, in a way that she used to -look at her when she was a child and had a bad cold.</p> - -<p>In the afternoon she took a book and went down to -the orchard; but she could not read. The bloom was -on the plums; the apples were reddening.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So silently they one to th’other come,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As colours steale into the Pear or Plum.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>At about four o’clock there was the sound of footsteps -behind her, and looking round she saw David. -He was very white.</p> - -<p>“I’ve come to say good-bye,” he said.</p> - -<p>“<i>Good-bye?</i> But I thought ... you were staying -some days.”</p> - -<p>“No ... I doubt I must be getting back. I told -Mrs. Lane last night, I’m going by the five-thirty.”</p> - -<p>He stood gazing down at her, looking very troubled.</p> - -<p>“Why have you suddenly changed your plans?” -she said, in a very low voice.</p> - -<p>He gazed at her in silence for a few seconds, and -then said, “I’m not so sure if I had any ... well, any<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_320"></a>[320]</span> -<i>plans</i>, so to speak, to change ... at least, I hope ... -but, anyway, I’m going ... now,” and he paused.</p> - -<p>She felt as if she were losing hold of things, as in -the last few seconds of chloroform, before one goes -off.</p> - -<p>“That play of yours ... that Don ... he was a -great sinner,” he was saying.</p> - -<p>“He repented,” she said, in a small, dry voice.</p> - -<p>“After ... he’d had what he wanted. That’s a -nice sort of repentance!” and he laughed harshly.</p> - -<p>From far away a cock, then another, gave its strange, -double-edged cry—a cry, which, like Hermes, is at -once the herald of the morning and all its radiant -denizens, and the marshaller to their dim abode of -the light troupe of passionate ghosts: Clerk Saunders -and Maid Margaret, Cathy and Heathcliff.</p> - -<p>He laughed again, this time a little wildly: “Hark -to the voice of one in the wilderness crying, ‘repent -ye!’ Do you remember Newman’s translation of -the <i>Æterne Rerum Conditor</i>? How does it go again? -Wait ...</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Hark! for Chanticleer is singing,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hark! he chides the lingering sun</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Something ... something ... wait ... how does it -go....</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Shrill it sounds, the storm relenting</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Soothes the weary seaman’s ears;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Once it wrought a great repenting</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In that flood of Peter’s tears.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Its rhythm, when his voice stopped, continued -rumbling dully along the surface of her mind.... -Once it wrought a great repenting in that flood of -Peter’s tears.... Once it wrought a.... Funny!<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_321"></a>[321]</span> -It was the same rhythm as a <i>Toccata</i> of <i>Galuppi’s</i>....</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Oh! Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very hard to find</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Once it wrought a great repenting in that flood of Peter’s....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">It would have to be “in that flood of Peter’s <i>mind</i>....” -Not very good.... What was he saying now?</p> - -<p>“I remember your saying once that the Scotch -thought an awful lot about the sinfulness of sin.... -I firmly believe that the power of remitting sin has been -given to the priests of God ... but are we, like that -knight, going to ... well to exploit, that grand -expression of God’s mercy to His creatures, the Sacrament -of Penance? Well? So you don’t think that -knight was a bad man?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t know,” she said wearily. “Good, -bad ... what does it all mean?”</p> - -<p>“You know fine what it all means. You wrote that -play,” a ghost of a smile came into his eyes. “Well -... I suppose ... it’s getting late ...” he sighed -drearily, and then held out his hand.</p> - -<p>For a few seconds she stood as if hypnotised, staring -at him. Then in a rush, the waste, the foolishness of -it all swept over her.</p> - -<p>“David! David!” she cried convulsively, seizing -his arm. “David! What is it all about? Don’t you -see?... there’s you, here’s me. Plasencia’s up -there where we’ll all soon be having tea and smoking -cigarettes. Oh, it’s a plot! it’s a plot! Don’t be -taken in ... why, it’s mad! You’re not going to -become a <i>priest</i>!” Then her words were stifled by -hysterical gasps.</p> - -<p>He took hold firmly of both of her wrists. “Hush, -you wee thing, hush! You’re havering, you know, -just havering. <i>You</i>—Sister Pilar—you’re not going to -try and wreck a vocation! You’d never do that!<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_322"></a>[322]</span> -You know fine that there’s nothing so grand as sacrifice—to -offer up youth and love to God. It’s not a sacrifice -if it doesn’t cost us dear. I don’t think, somehow, -that a bread made of wheat would satisfy you and me -long. Remember, my dear, this isn’t everything—there’s -another life. Hush now! Haven’t you a -handkerchief? Here’s mine, then.”</p> - -<p>With a wistful smile he watched her wipe her eyes, -and then he said, “Well, I doubt ... I must be going. -The motor will be there. God bless you ... Pilar,” -he looked at her, then turned slowly and walked away -in the direction of the house.</p> - -<p>She made as if to run after him, and then, with a -gesture of despair, sank down upon the ground.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So silently they one to th’other come,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As colours steale into the Pear or Plum,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And, Aire-like, leave no pression to be seen</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where e’re they met, or parting place has been.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Well, it was over. She had shut up Life into a plot, -and there had been a counterplot, the liturgical plot -into which Rome compresses life’s vast psychic stratification; -and, somehow or other, her plot and the -counterplot had become one.</p> - -<p>Why had he looked so happy when he arrived—only -yesterday? Was it joy at the thought of so soon -saying his first mass? She would never know. The -dead, plotting through a plot, had silenced him for -ever.</p> - -<p>Oh, foolish race of myth-makers! Starving, though -the plain is golden with wheat; though their tent is -pitched between two rivers, dying of thirst; calling -for the sun when it is dark, and for the moon when it -is midday.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_323"></a>[323]</span></p> - -<p class="tb">The sun was setting, and the shadows were growing -long. Some one was coming. It was the Doña, looking, -in the evening light, unusually monumental, and, as -on that September afternoon last year when the -children were clinging round her skirts, symbolic. But -now Teresa knew of what she was the symbol.</p> - -<p>She came up to her and laid her hand on her head. -“Come in, my child; it’s getting chilly. I’ve had a -fire lit in your room.”</p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="smcap">Paris,<br /> -4 rue de Chevreuse,<br /> -1923.</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;"> -<img src="images/stars.jpg" width="300" height="140" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="titlepage">GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="footnotes"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak">FOOTNOTES</h2> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> The <i>Morería</i> was the quarter in Spanish towns assigned to Moorish colonists.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> A Spaniard who could prove that his ancestry was free from any taint -of Jewish or Moorish blood, was known as an “Old Christian.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> It was looked upon as a grave crime for a Christian to do this.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> It was a superstition of the Middle Ages that crows were born pure white.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> <i>Alguaciles</i>: the Spanish equivalent in the Middle Ages to policemen.</p> - -</div> - -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="max30"> - -<div class="figright" style="width: 100px;"> -<img src="images/collins.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="center larger"><span class="smaller">Messrs.</span><br /> -COLLINS’<br /> -<span class="smaller">Latest Novels</span></p> - -<p class="hanging clearboth"><i>Messrs. COLLINS will always be glad to send -their book lists regularly to readers who will -send name and address.</i></p> - -<p class="center">Crown 8vo. <span class="larger"><b>7/6</b></span> net Cloth</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">Sayonara</p> - -<p class="larger right">JOHN PARIS</p> - -<p><i>Kimono</i>, Mr. John Paris’s first novel, has proved one of -the most remarkably successful books published since the -war. It has been a “best seller” in England and America; -it has become famous all over the Far East and in Canada -and Australia, besides being translated into several foreign -languages. Its successor—<i>Sayonara</i>—has been eagerly -awaited. The theme is based on the familiar aphorism -that “East is East and West is West,” and that any -attempt to reconcile them usually means disaster. Here -again, as in <i>Kimono</i>, are found the most vivid pictures of -Japan, old and new; Tokyo and its underworld, a powerful -picture of Japanese farm life, and the cruel slavery of the -“Yoshiwara.”</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">Told by an Idiot</p> - -<p class="larger right">ROSE MACAULAY</p> - -<p class="center">Author of<br /> -<i>Dangerous Ages</i>, <i>Mystery at Geneva</i>, <i>Potterism</i>, etc.</p> - -<p>Miss Macaulay here presents her philosophy of life, -through the examination of the sharply contrasted careers -of the sharply contrasted members of a large family, -from 1879 to 1923.</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">The Imperturbable Duchess<br /> -<span class="smaller">And Other Stories</span></p> - -<p class="larger right">J. D. BERESFORD</p> - -<p class="center">Author of<br /> -<i>The Prisoners of Hartling</i>, <i>An Imperfect Mother</i>, etc.</p> - -<p>This is the first collection of magazine stories which -Mr. Beresford has published. In “An Author’s Advice,” -which he has written as a foreword, he deals searchingly -with the technique of the modern short story, and shows -how drastically the type of story to-day is dictated by the -editors of the great American magazines.</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">The Hat of Destiny</p> - -<p class="larger right">Mrs. T. P. O’CONNOR</p> - -<p>“The best light novel I ever read. The plot is so original, -the characters so sharply drawn and interesting, the -interest so sustained, and the whole thing so witty and -amusing, that I could not put it down.” So wrote Miss -Gertrude Atherton to the author of <i>The Hat of Destiny</i>. -Oh, that hat! that incomparably fascinating hat, what -dire rivalries it engendered, what domestic tribulations -it sardonically plotted when it arrived in Newport amongst -those cosmopolitan butterflies!</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">The Soul of Kol Nikon</p> - -<p class="larger right">ELEANOR FARJEON</p> - -<p>Is the fantasy of a boy in a Scandinavian village, who -from his birth is treated as a pariah because his mother -declares that he is a Changeling. He himself grows up -under the same belief, and the story, treated in the vein -of folklore, leaves it an open question whether there is -some truth in it, or whether it is the result of public -opinion upon a distorted imagination. The tale is told -with all the poetry, charm, and imaginative insight which -made <i>Martin Pippin in the Apple-Orchard</i> such a wonderful -success.</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">The Richest Man</p> - -<p class="larger right">EDWARD SHANKS</p> - -<p>Though in the interval Mr. Shanks has published volumes -of verse and criticism, this brilliantly clever study is the -only novel he has written since 1920.</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">Anthony Dare</p> - -<p class="larger right">ARCHIBALD MARSHALL</p> - -<p>With <i>Anthony Dare</i> Mr. Marshall returns to the creation -of that type of novel with which his name is most popularly -associated, after two interesting experiments of another -kind, that genial “Thick Ear” shocker, <i>Big Peter</i>, and -that charming and very successful phantasy, <i>Pippin</i>. It -is a study of a boy’s character during several critical -years of its development. The scene is chiefly laid in a -rich northern suburb.</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">The Peregrine’s Saga:<br /> -<span class="smaller">and Other Stories</span></p> - -<p class="larger right">HENRY WILLIAMSON</p> - -<p class="center">Illustrated by <span class="smcap">Warwick Reynolds</span></p> - -<p>There have been other stories about birds and animals, -but seldom before has an author combined the gifts of -great prose writing and originality of vision, with a first-hand -knowledge of wild life. Mr. Williamson knows flowers, -old men, and children as well as he knows falcons, otters, -hounds, horses, badgers, “mice, and other small deer.”</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">A Perfect Day</p> - -<p class="larger right">BOHUN LYNCH</p> - -<p class="center"><b>5/-</b> net</p> - -<p class="center">Author of <i>Knuckles and Gloves</i>, etc.</p> - -<p>Has any one ever experienced one really perfectly -happy day? Mr. Lynch has made the interesting experiment -of showing his hero, throughout one long summer -day, in a state of perfect bliss. The perfect day is a very -simple one and well within the range of possibility.</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">The Counterplot</p> - -<p class="larger right">HOPE MIRRLEES</p> - -<p><i>The Counterplot</i> is a study of the literary temperament. -Teresa Lane, watching the slow movement of life manifesting -itself in the changing inter-relations of her family, -is teased by the complexity of the spectacle, and comes to -realise that her mind will never know peace till, by transposing -the problem into art, she has reduced it to its -permanent essential factors.</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">The Groote Park Murder</p> - -<p class="larger right">FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS</p> - -<p class="center">Author of <i>The Cask</i>.</p> - -<p><i>The Groote Park Murder</i> is as fine a book as <i>The Cask</i>, -and there can be no higher praise. Here again a delightfully -ingenious plot is masterly handled. From the moment -the body of “Albert Smith” is found in the tunnel at -Middelberg, the police of South Africa and subsequently -of Scotland, find themselves faced with a crime of extreme -ingenuity and complexity, the work of a super-criminal, -who, as nearly as possible, successfully evades justice.</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">The Kang-He Vase</p> - -<p class="larger right">J. S. FLETCHER</p> - -<p>Who murdered the man found roped to the gibbet on -Gallows Tree Point? Who stole Miss Ellingham’s famous -Kang-He Vase? What was Uncle Keziah doing at Middlebourne? -This is the first novel by Mr. J. S. Fletcher we -have had the pleasure of publishing, and we are very glad -to say that we have contracted for several more books -from his able pen.</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">Ramshackle House</p> - -<p class="larger right">HULBERT FOOTNER</p> - -<p class="center">Author of <i>The Owl Taxi</i>, <i>The Deaves Affair</i>, etc.</p> - -<p>This is Hulbert Footner’s finest mystery story. It tells -how Pen Broome saved her lover, accused of the brutal -murder of a friend; how she saved him first from the -horde of detectives searching for him in the woods round -Ramshackle House, and then, when his arrest proved -inevitable, how, with indomitable courage and resource, -she forged the chain of evidence which proved him to -have been the victim of a diabolical plot. A charming -love story and a real “thriller.”</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">The Finger-Post</p> - -<p class="larger right">Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY</p> - -<p class="center">Author of <i>Beanstalk</i>, etc.</p> - -<p>The scene of this book is the Sussex Weald, and the -story is concerned with the Durrants, who have for generations -been thatchers. The book opens with the birth of -a second boy, Joseph, a sickly, peculiar lad, considered to -be half-witted. The theme is his struggle against his lot, -his humble station, his crazy body, the mournful demands -of his spirit. When he becomes a man, his clever brain -develops and his worldly progress bewilders his relatives -and neighbours—all of them still refusing to believe that -he is not the fool they have always declared him to be.</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">A Bird in a Storm</p> - -<p class="larger right">E. MARIA ALBANESI</p> - -<p class="center">Author of <i>Roseanne</i>, etc.</p> - -<p>Anne Ranger, brought up in a very worldly atmosphere, -finds herself confronted by a most difficult problem and -coerced by her former school friend—Joyce Pleybury, -who has drifted into a bad groove—to take an oath of -secrecy which reacts on Anne’s own life in almost tragic -fashion, shattering her happiness from the very day of -her marriage, and thereafter exposing her like a bird in -a storm to be swept hither and thither, unable to find safe -ground on which to stand.</p> - -<p class="larger noindent">Mary Beaudesert, V.S.</p> - -<p class="larger right">KATHARINE TYNAN</p> - -<p class="center">Author of <i>A Mad Marriage</i>, etc.</p> - -<p>Is the story of an aristocratic young woman who feels -the call of the suffering animal creation and obeys it, -leaving tenderly loved parents, an ideal home, and all a -girl’s heart could desire, to qualify as a veterinary surgeon. -How she carries out her vocation is told in this story, -which is full of the love of animals.</p> - -</div> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<hr class="pgx" /> -<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COUNTERPLOT***</p> -<p>******* This file should be named 63935-h.htm or 63935-h.zip *******</p> -<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> -<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/3/9/3/63935">http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/9/3/63935</a></p> -<p> -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed.</p> - -<p>Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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