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.