1
The Villa Del Ciprés at Orotava was built on a headland above the
Puerto. It had taken its name from its fine cypress trees, of which
there were many in the spacious garden. At the Puerto there were
laughter, shouting and singing as the oxen wagons with their crates of
bananas came grating and stumbling down to the wharf. At the Puerto one
might almost have said there was commerce, for beyond the pier waited
the dirty fruit steamers; but the Villa del Ciprés stood proudly aloof
like a Spanish grandee who had seen better days—one felt that it
literally hated commerce.
The villa was older than the streets of the Puerto, though much grass
grew between their venerable cobbles. It was older than the oldest
villas on the hill, the hill that was known as old Orotava, though their
green latticed shutters were bleached by the suns of innumerable
semi-tropical summers. It was so old indeed, that no peasant could have
told you precisely when it had come into being; the records were lost,
if they had ever existed—for its history one had to apply to its owner.
But then its owner was always in Spain, and his agent who kept the place
in repair, was too lazy to bother himself over trifles. What could it
matter when the first stone was laid, or who laid it? The villa was
always well let—he would yawn, roll a cigarette in his fingers, lick
the paper with the thick, red tip of his tongue, and finally go to sleep
in the sunshine to dream only of satisfactory commissions.
The Villa del Ciprés was a low stone house that had once been tinted a
lemon yellow. Its shutters were greener than those on the hill, for
every ten years or so they were painted. All its principal windows
looked over the sea that lay at the foot of the little headland. There
were large, dim rooms with rough mosaic floors and walls that were
covered by ancient frescoes. Some of these frescoes were primitive but
holy, others were primitive but distinctly less holy; however, they were
all so badly defaced, that the tenants were spared what might otherwise
have been rather a shock at the contrast. The furniture, although very
good of its kind, was sombre, and moreover it was terribly scanty, for
its owner was far too busy in Seville to attend to his villa in Orotava.
But one glory the old house did certainly possess; its garden, a
veritable Eden of a garden, obsessed by a kind of primitive urge towards
all manner of procreation. It was hot with sunshine and the flowing of
sap, so that even its shade held a warmth in its greenness, while the
virile growth of its flowers and its trees gave off a strangely
disturbing fragrance. These trees had long been a haven for birds, from
the crested hoopoes to the wild canaries who kept up a chorus of song in
the branches.
2
Stephen and Mary arrived at the Villa del Ciprés, not very long after
Christmas. They had spent their Christmas Day aboard ship, and on
landing had stayed for a week at Santa Cruz before taking the long,
rough drive to Orotava. And as though the fates were being propitious,
or unpropitious perhaps—who shall say?—the garden was looking its
loveliest, almost melodramatic it looked in the sunset. Mary gazed round
her wide-eyed with pleasure; but after a while her eyes must turn, as
they always did now, to rest upon Stephen; while Stephen’s uncertain and
melancholy eyes must look back with great love in their depths for Mary.
Together they made the tour of the villa, and when this was over Stephen
laughed a little; ‘Not much of anything, is there, Mary?’
‘No, but quite enough. Who wants tables and chairs?’
‘Well, if you’re contented, I am,’ Stephen told her. And indeed, so far
as the Villa del Ciprés went, they were both very well contented.
They discovered that the indoor staff would consist of two peasants; a
plump, smiling woman called Concha, who adhered to the ancient tradition
of the island and tied her head up in a white linen kerchief, and a girl
whose black hair was elaborately dressed, and whose cheeks were very
obviously powdered—Concha’s niece she was, by name Esmeralda. Esmeralda
looked cross, but this may have been because she squinted so badly.
In the garden worked a handsome person called Ramon, together with
Pedro, a youth of sixteen. Pedro was light-hearted, precocious and
spotty. He hated his simple work in the garden; what he liked was
driving his father’s mules for the tourists, according to Ramon. Ramon
spoke English passably well; he had picked it up from the numerous
tenants and was proud of this fact, so while bringing in the luggage he
paused now and then to impart information. It was better to hire mules
and donkeys from the father of Pedro—he had very fine mules and
donkeys. It was better to take Pedro and none other as your guide, for
thus would be saved any little ill-feeling. It was better to let Concha
do all the shopping—she was honest and wise as the Blessèd Virgin. It
was better never to scold Esmeralda, who was sensitive on account of her
squint and therefore inclined to be easily wounded. If you wounded the
heart of Esmeralda, she walked out of the house and Concha walked with
her. The island women were often like this; you upset them and per Dios,
your dinner could burn! They would not even wait to attend to your
dinner.
‘You come home,’ smiled Ramon, ‘and you say, “What burns? Is my villa on
fire?” Then you call and you call. No answer . . . all gone!’ And he
spread out his hands with a wide and distressingly empty gesture.
Ramon said that it was better to buy flowers from him: ‘I cut fresh from
the garden when you want,’ he coaxed gently. He spoke even his broken
English with the soft, rather sing-song drawl of the local peasants.
‘But aren’t they our flowers?’ inquired Mary, surprised.
Ramon shook his head: ‘Yours to see, yours to touch, but not yours to
take, only mine to take—I sell them as part of my little payment. But
to you I sell very cheap, Señorita, because you resemble the santa noche
that makes our gardens smell sweet at night. I will show you our
beautiful santa noche.’ He was thin as a lath and as brown as a
chestnut, and his shirt was quite incredibly dirty; but when he walked
he moved like a king on his rough bare feet with their broken toe-nails.
‘This evening I make you a present of my flowers; I bring you a very big
bunch of tabachero,’ he remarked.
‘Oh, you mustn’t do that,’ protested Mary, getting out her purse.
But Ramon looked offended: ‘I have said it. I give you the tabachero.’
3
Their dinner consisted of a local fish fried in oil—the fish had a very
strange figure, and the oil, Stephen thought, tasted slightly rancid;
there was also a small though muscular chicken. But Concha had provided
large baskets of fruit; loquats still warm from the tree that bred them,
the full flavoured little indigenous bananas, oranges sweet as though
dripping honey, custard apples and guavas had Concha provided, together
with a bottle of the soft yellow wine so dearly beloved of the island
Spaniards.
Outside in the garden there was luminous darkness. The night had a
quality of glory about it, the blue glory peculiar to Africa and seen
seldom or never in our more placid climate. A warm breeze stirred the
eucalyptus trees and their crude, harsh smell was persistently mingled
with the thick scents of heliotrope and datura, with the sweet but
melancholy scent of jasmine, with the faint, unmistakable odour of
cypress.
Stephen lit a cigarette: ‘Shall we go out, Mary?’
They stood for a minute looking up at the stars, so much larger and
brighter than stars seen in England. From a pond on the farther side of
the villa, came the queer, hoarse chirping of innumerable frogs singing
their prehistoric love songs. A star fell, shooting swiftly earthward
through the darkness.
Then the sweetness that was Mary seemed to stir and mingle with the very
urgent sweetness of that garden; with the dim, blue glory of the African
night, and with all the stars in their endless courses, so that Stephen
could have wept aloud as she stood there, because of the words that must
not be spoken. For now that this girl was returning to health, her youth
was becoming even more apparent, and something in the quality of Mary’s
youth, something terrible and ruthless as an unsheathed sword, would
leap out at such moments and stand between them.
Mary slipped a small, cool hand into Stephen’s, and they walked on
towards the edge of the headland. For a long time they gazed out over
the sea, while their thoughts were always of one another. But Mary’s
thoughts were not very coherent, and because she was filled with a vague
discontent, she sighed and moved even nearer to Stephen, who suddenly
put an arm round her shoulder.
Stephen said: ‘Are you tired, you little child?’ And her husky voice was
infinitely gentle, so that Mary’s eyes filled with sudden tears.
She answered: ‘I’ve waited a long, long time, all my life—and now that
I’ve found you at last, I can’t get near you. Why is it? Tell me.’
‘Aren’t you near? It seems to me you’re quite near!’ And Stephen must
smile in spite of herself.
‘Yes, but you feel such a long way away.’
‘That’s because you’re not only tired out but foolish!’
Yet they lingered; for when they returned to the villa they would part,
and they dreaded these moments of parting. Sometimes they would suddenly
remember the night before it had fallen, and when this happened each
would be conscious of a very great sadness which their hearts would
divine, the one from the other.
But presently Stephen took Mary’s arm: ‘I believe that big star’s moved
over more than six inches! It’s late—we must have been out here for
ages.’ And she led the girl slowly back to the villa.
4
The days slipped by, days of splendid sunshine that gave bodily health
and strength to Mary. Her pale skin was tanned to a healthful brown, and
her eyes no longer looked heavy with fatigue—only now their expression
was seldom happy.
She and Stephen would ride far afield on their mules; they would often
ride right up into the mountains, climbing the hill to old Orotava where
the women sat at their green postigos through the long, quiet hours of
their indolent day and right on into the evening. The walls of the town
would be covered with flowers, jasmine, plumbago and bougainvillea. But
they would not linger in old Orotava; pressing on they would climb
always up and up to the region of health and trailing arbutus, and
beyond that again to the higher slopes that had once been the home of a
mighty forest. Now, only a few Spanish chestnut trees remained to mark
the decline of that forest.
Sometimes they took their luncheon along, and when they did this young
Pedro went with them, for he it was who must drive the mule that carried
Concha’s ample lunch-basket. Pedro adored these impromptu excursions,
they made an excuse for neglecting the garden. He would saunter along
chewing blades of grass, or the stem of some flower he had torn from a
wall; or perhaps he would sing softly under his breath, for he knew many
songs of his native island. But if the mule Celestino should stumble, or
presume, in his turn, to tear flowers from a wall, then Pedro would
suddenly cease his soft singing and shout guttural remarks to old
Celestino: ‘Vaya, burro! Celestino, arre! Arre—boo!’ he would shout
with a slap, so that Celestino must swallow his flowers in one angry
gulp, before having a sly kick at Pedro.
The lunch would be eaten in the cool upland air, while the beasts stood
near at hand, placidly grazing. Against a sky of incredible blueness the
Peak would gleam as though powdered with crystal—Teide, mighty mountain
of snow with the heart of fire and the brow of crystal. Down the winding
tracks would come goats with their herds, the tinkle of goat-bells
breaking the stillness. And as all such things have seemed wonderful to
lovers throughout the ages, even so now they seemed very wonderful to
Mary and Stephen.
There were days when, leaving the uplands for the vale, they would ride
past the big banana plantations and the glowing acres of ripe tomatoes.
Geraniums and agaves would be growing side by side in the black volcanic
dust of the roadway. From the stretching Valley of Orotava they would
see the rugged line of the mountains. The mountains would look blue,
like the African nights, all save Teide, clothed in her crystalline
whiteness.
And now while they sat together in the garden at evening, there would
sometimes come beggars, singing; ragged fellows who played deftly on
their guitars and sang songs whose old melodies hailed from Spain, but
whose words sprang straight from the heart of the island:
‘A-a-a-y! Before I saw thee I was at peace,
But now I am tormented because I have seen thee.
Take away mine eyes oh, enemy! Oh, belovèd!
Take away mine eyes, for they have turned me to fire.
My blood is as the fire in the heart of Teide.
A-a-a-y! Before I saw thee I was at peace.’
The strange minor music with its restless rhythms, possessed a very
potent enchantment, so that the heart beat faster to hear it, and the
mind grew mazed with forbidden thoughts, and the soul grew heavy with
the infinite sadness of fulfilled desire; but the body knew only the
urge towards a complete fulfilment. . . . ‘A-a-a-a-y! Before I saw thee
I was at peace.’
They would not understand the soft Spanish words, and yet as they sat
there they could but divine their meaning, for love is no slave of mere
language. Mary would want Stephen to take her in her arms, so must rest
her cheek against Stephen’s shoulder, as though they two had a right to
such music, had a right to their share in the love songs of the world.
But Stephen would always move away quickly.
‘Let’s go in,’ she would mutter; and her voice would sound rough, for
that bright sword of youth would have leapt out between them.
5
There came days when they purposely avoided each other, trying to find
peace in separation. Stephen would go for long rides alone, leaving Mary
to idle about the villa; and when she got back Mary would not speak, but
would wander away by herself to the garden. For Stephen had grown almost
harsh at times, possessed as she now was by something like terror, since
it seemed to her that what she must say to this creature she loved would
come as a death-blow, that all youth and all joy would be slain in Mary.
Tormented in body and mind and spirit, she would push the girl away from
her roughly: ‘Leave me alone, I can’t bear any more!’
‘Stephen—I don’t understand. Do you hate me?’
‘Hate you? Of course you don’t understand—only, I tell you I simply
can’t bear it.’
They would stare at each other pale-faced and shaken.
The long nights became even harder to endure, for now they would feel so
terribly divided. Their days would be heavy with misunderstandings,
their nights filled with doubts, apprehensions and longings. They would
often have parted as enemies, and therein would lie the great loneliness
of it.
As time went on they grew deeply despondent, their despondency robbing
the sun of its brightness, robbing the little goat-bells of their music,
robbing the dark of its luminous glory. The songs of the beggars who
sang in the garden at the hour when the santa noche smelt sweetest,
those songs would seem full of a cruel jibing: ‘A-a-a-y! Before I saw
thee I was at peace, but now I am tormented because I have seen thee.’
Thus were all things becoming less good in their sight, less perfect
because of their own frustration.
6
But Mary Llewellyn was no coward and no weakling, and one night, at long
last, pride came to her rescue. She said: ‘I want to speak to you,
Stephen.’
‘Not now, it’s so late—to-morrow morning.’
‘No, now.’ And she followed Stephen into her bedroom.
For a moment they avoided each other’s eyes, then Mary began to talk
rather fast: ‘I can’t stay. It’s all been a heart-breaking mistake. I
thought you wanted me because you cared. I thought—oh, I don’t know
what I thought—but I won’t accept your charity, Stephen, not now that
you’ve grown to hate me like this—I’m going back home to England. I
forced myself on you, I asked you to take me. I must have been mad; you
just took me out of pity; you thought that I was ill and you felt sorry
for me. Well, now I’m not ill and not mad any more, and I’m going. Every
time I come near you you shrink or push me away as though I repelled
you. But I want us to part quickly because. . . .’ Her voice broke:
‘because it torments me to be always with you and to feel that you’ve
literally grown to hate me. I can’t stand it; I’d rather not see you,
Stephen.’
Stephen stared at her, white and aghast. Then all in a moment the
restraint of years was shattered as though by some mighty convulsion.
She remembered nothing, was conscious of nothing except that the
creature she loved was going.
‘You child,’ she gasped, ‘you don’t understand, you can’t
understand—God help me, I love you!’ And now she had the girl in her
arms and was kissing her eyes and her mouth: ‘Mary . . . Mary. . . .’
They stood there lost to all sense of time, to all sense of reason, to
all things save each other, in the grip of what can be one of the most
relentless of all the human emotions.
Then Stephen’s arms suddenly fell to her sides: ‘Stop, stop for God’s
sake—you’ve got to listen.’
Oh, but now she must pay to the uttermost farthing for the madness that
had left those words unspoken—even as her father had paid before her.
With Mary’s kisses still hot on her lips, she must pay and pay unto the
uttermost farthing. And because of an anguish that seemed past
endurance, she spoke roughly; the words when they came were cruel. She
spared neither the girl who must listen to them, nor herself who must
force her to stand there and listen.
‘Have you understood? Do you realize now what it’s going to mean if you
give yourself to me?’ Then she stopped abruptly . . . Mary was crying.
Stephen said, and her voice had grown quite toneless: ‘It’s too much to
ask—you’re right, it’s too much. I had to tell you—forgive me, Mary.’
But Mary turned on her with very bright eyes: ‘You can say that—you,
who talk about loving! What do I care for all you’ve told me? What do I
care for the world’s opinion? What do I care for anything but you, and
you just as you are—as you are, I love you! Do you think I’m crying
because of what you’ve told me? I’m crying because of your dear, scarred
face . . . the misery on it. . . . Can’t you understand that all that I
am belongs to you, Stephen?’
Stephen bent down and kissed Mary’s hands very humbly, for now she could
find no words any more . . . and that night they were not divided.