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.