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Title: The Counterplot

Author: Hope Mirrlees

Release date: December 1, 2020 [eBook #63935]

Language: English



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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.




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Sayonara

JOHN PARIS


_Kimono_, Mr. John Paris’s first novel, has proved one of the most
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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
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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
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The Soul of Kol Nikon

ELEANOR FARJEON

Is the fantasy of a boy in a Scandinavian village, who from his birth is
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The Richest Man

EDWARD SHANKS

Though in the interval Mr. Shanks has published volumes of verse and
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Anthony Dare

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

With _Anthony Dare_ Mr. Marshall returns to the creation of that type
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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
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BOHUN LYNCH

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HOPE MIRRLEES

_The Counterplot_ is a study of the literary temperament. Teresa Lane,
watching the slow movement of life manifesting itself in the changing
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Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY

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Author of _Roseanne_, etc.

Anne Ranger, brought up in a very worldly atmosphere, finds herself
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Author of _A Mad Marriage_, etc.

Is the story of an aristocratic young woman who feels the call of the
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an ideal home, and all a girl’s heart could desire, to qualify as a
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story, which is full of the love of animals.





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