1
Dr. Sinclair and the children, Guy, Rory, and, of course, Arnold, were to
spend Christmas at Plasencia.
By tea-time on the twenty-third they had all arrived except Rory, who was
motoring down from Aldershot in his little “two-seater.”
Harry Sinclair, a big massive brown man, his fine head covered with
crisp curls, was standing on the hearth-rug devouring hunks of iced
cake and, completely indifferent as to whether he had an audience or
not, was, in his own peculiar style—hesitating attacks, gropings for
the right word which, when found, were trumpeted, bellowed, rather than
uttered—delivering a lecture of great wit and acumen.
The Doña and Arnold—he scowling heavily—were talking in low tones on the
outskirts of the circle; while Dick would eye them from time to time
uneasily from his arm-chair.
The children—to celebrate their arrival—were having tea in the
drawing-room, and both were extremely excited.
Anna’s passion for stamps was on the wane, and she no longer dreamed of
Lincoln’s album so bulgy that it would not shut. She was now collecting
the Waverley Novels in a uniform edition of small volumes, bound in hard
green board and printed upon India paper; and following some mysterious
sequence of her own that had nothing to do with chronology, she had “only
got as far as the _Talisman_.” She was wondering if there was time
before Christmas Day to convey to the Doña—very delicately of course—in
what directions her desires now lay.
“The ... er ... chief merit of Shakespeare is that he is so ... er ...
admirably ... er ... PROSAIC. The qualities we call prosaic exist only in
verse, and _vice versa_....” (“How funny!” thought Anna, both pleased and
puzzled, “Daddy is talking about _Vice Versa_.” She was herself just then
in the middle of Anstey’s _Vice Versa_.) “For instance ... er ... the
finest fragments of Sappho are ... er ... merely an ... er ... UNADORNED
STATEMENT OF FACTS! Don’t you agree, Cust?”
This purely rhetorical appeal elicited from Guy a shrieking summary of
his own views on poetry; Harry’s eyes roving the while restlessly over
the room, while now and then he gave an impatient grunt.
In the meantime tea and cake were going to Jasper’s head. He began to
wriggle in his chair, and pretend to be a pig gobbling in a trough. As
the grown-ups were too occupied to pay any attention, it was Anna who had
to say: “Jasper! _Don’t_ be silly.”
But he was not to be daunted by Anna; drawing one finger down the side
of his nose he squealed out in the strange pronunciation he affected
when over-excited: “Play Miss Fyles-Smith come down my nose!” (Miss
Fyles-Smith, it may be remembered, was the “lady professor” who sometimes
worked with Dr. Sinclair.)
The Doña stopped suddenly in the middle of something she was saying to
Arnold, raised her _lorgnette_, and looked at Harry; he was frowning,
and, with an impatient jerk of the head, turned again to Guy: “Well, as I
was saying, Cust....”
It might, of course, be interpreted quite simply as merely momentarily
irritation at the idiotic interruption.
“You see,” began Anna in laborious explanation, “he pretends that there’s
a real Miss Fyles-Smith and a pretence one, and the pretence one is
called ‘play Miss Fyles-Smith,’ and whenever he gets silly he wants
people to come down his nose, and....”
Then there was a laugh in the hall, discreetly echoed by Rendall the
butler.
“Hallo! That’s Rory,” said Concha, and ran out into the hall.
Teresa felt herself stiffening into an attitude of hostile criticism.
“Here he is!”
* * * * *
First entry of the _jeune premier_ in a musical play:
“Well, guuurls, here we are again,” while the Beauty Chorus crowds round
him and he chucks the prettiest one under the chin. Then—bang! squeak!
pop! goes the orchestra and, running right up to the footlights, the
smirking chorus massed behind him, he begins half singing, half speaking:
When I came back from sea
The guuurls were waiting for me.
Well, at last it was over and he was sitting at a little table eating
muffins and blackberry jam.
“What have I been doing, Mrs. Lane? Oh, I’ve been leading a blameless
life,” and then he grinned and, Teresa was convinced, _simultaneously_
caught her eye, the Doña’s, Concha’s, and Jollypot’s.
She remembered when they were children how on their visits to the
National Portrait Gallery, Jollypot used to explain to them that the only
test of a portrait’s having been painted by a great master was whether
the eyes seemed simultaneously fixed upon every one in the room; and they
would all rush off to different corners of the gallery, and the eyes
would certainly follow every one of them. The eyes of a male flirt have
the same mysterious ubiquity.
“I do think it’s most extraordinary good of you to have me here for
Christmas. I feel it’s frightful cheek for such a new friend, but I
simply hadn’t the strength of mind to refuse—I _did_ so want to come.
I know I _ought_ to have gone up to Scotland, but my uncle really much
prefers having his goose to himself. He’s a sort of Old Father William,
you know, can eat it up beak and all.... Yes, the shops _are_ looking
jolly. I got stuck with the little car in a queue in Regent Street
the other day and I longed to jump out and smash the windows and loot
everything I saw. I say, Guy, you ought to write a poem about Christmas
shops....”
“Well, as a matter of fact, it _is_ an amazing _flora_ and _fauna_,”
cried Guy, moving away from Harry and the fire: “Sucking pigs with
oranges in their mouths, toy giraffes ... and all these frocks—Redfern
mysteriously blossoming as though it were St. John’s Eve, the
wassail-bowl of Revell crowned with imitation flowers....”
“Go it! Go it!” laughed Rory.
“Oh Rory, it was too priceless—do you remember that exquisite _mannequin_
at Revell’s, a lovely thing with heavenly ankles? Well, the other day I
was at the Berkeley with Frida and ...” and Concha successfully narrowed
his attention into a channel of her own digging.
What energy to dig channels, to be continually on the alert, to fight!
Much better, like Horace’s arena-wearied gladiator, to seek the _rudis_
of dismissal.
The Doña made a little sign to Arnold, and they both got up and left the
room, Dick suspiciously following them with his eyes.
The talk and laughter like waves went on beating round Teresa.
Now Guy was turning frantic glances towards her and talking louder and
more shrilly than usual—evidently he thought he was saying something
particularly brilliant, and wanted her to hear it.
“Bergson seems to look upon the intellectuals as so many half-witted old
colonels, living in a sort of Bath, at any rate a geometrical town—all
squares and things, and each square built by a philosopher or school of
thought: Berkeley Square, Russell Square, Oxford Crescent....”
“Well, the War did one good thing, at any rate, it silenced Bergson,”
said Harry impatiently, “I don’t think he has any influence now, but not
being er ... er ... a Fellow of KING’S, I’m not well up in what ... er
... the YOUNG are thinking.”
“Oh well, here _are_ the young—you’d better ask ’em,” chuckled Dick,
since the departure of his wife and son, once more quite natural and
genial: “Anna, do you read Bergson?”
“No!” she answered sulkily and a little scornfully—she liked the
“grown-ups” to pay her attention, but not _that_ sort of attention.
“There you are, Harry!” chuckled Dick triumphantly; though what his cause
was for triumph must remain a mystery.
“Quite right, old thing! I don’t read him either—much too deep for you
and me. What _are_ you reading just now?” said Rory, beckoning her to his
side.
She at once became friendly again: “I’m reading _Vice Versa_,” and she
chuckled reminiscently, “And ... I’ve just finished the _Talisman_ ...
and I’d like to read _Kenilworth_.”
What a pity the Doña was not there to hear! But perhaps one of them
would tell her what she had said, and she would guess.
“Which do you like best, Richard Cœur de Lion or Richard Bultitude?”
asked Guy.
“_Richard_ Bultitude!” laughed Rory scornfully, “Do you hear that, Anna?
He thinks the old buffer’s name was Richard! But we know better; _we_
know it was Paul, don’t we?”
Anna would have liked to have shared with Rory an appearance of superior
knowledge; but honesty forced her to say: “Oh but the little boy was
Richard Bultitude—Dickie, you know; his real name was Richard.”
“There, Rory! There!” shouted Guy triumphantly.
“Do you remember that girl’s—I can’t remember her name, that one that
shoots a _billet-doux_ at Mr. Bultitude in church—well, her papa, the
old boy that gave the responses all wrong ‘in a loud confident voice,’
doesn’t he remind you rather of Uncle Jimmy?” said Rory to Guy.
“The best character in ... er ... that book is the German master, who ...
er ...” began Harry.
“Oh _yes_, a _heavenly_ creature—‘I veel make a leetle choke to agompany
it’!” shrieked Concha.
“I hate Dulcie—I think she’s silly,” said Anna; but no one was listening
to her, they were launched upon a “grown-up” discussion of _Vice Versa_
that might last them till it was time to dress for dinner ... a rosy
English company, red-mufflered, gaitered, bottle-green-coated, with
shrieks of laughter keeping the slide “boiling” in the neighbourhood of
Dingley Dell.
Teresa, as usual, sitting apart, felt in despair—what could be done with
such material? A ceaseless shower of insignificant un-co-related events,
and casual, ephemeral talk ... she must not submit to the tyranny of
detail, the gluttony that wanted everything ... she must mythologise,
ruthlessly prune ... hacking away through the thick foliage of words,
chopping off the superfluous characters, so that at last the plot should
become visible.
Anna, rather resenting that what she looked upon as a children’s book
should be commandeered by the grown-ups for their own silly talk in which
she could not share, went off to the billiard-room to play herself tunes
on the gramophone.
Jasper had long since sneaked off with ’Snice for a second tea in the
kitchen.
Then Guy left the group of Anstey amateurs and came and sat down beside
Teresa.
“Have you been reading anything?” he asked; and without waiting for an
answer, and slightly colouring, he said eagerly: “I’ve been learning
Spanish, you know.”
“Have you? Do you like it?”
And that was all! How often had he rehearsed the conversation, or,
rather, the disquisition, that ought at this point to have arisen: “Those
who know the delicate sophistication of _Lazarillo de Tormes_ feel less
amazement when from an _Amadis_-pastoral Euphues-rotted Europe an urbane
yet compelling voice begins very quietly: ‘In a village of la Mancha,
the name of which I do not care to recollect, there lived not long ago a
knight’....”
And surely she might have shown a little emotion—was it not just a little
touching that entirely for her sake he should have taken the trouble to
learn Spanish?
“Well, what have you been reading in Spanish—the _Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse_?”
Though this was only a joke, he felt sore and nettled, and said sulkily:
“What’s that? I’ve never heard of it.”
“You lie, Guy, you lie! You have heard of the _Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse_, and you have heard of _If Winter Comes_; because from what
you tell me of your parents they probably talk of both incessantly,
and....”
“You’re quite right, as a matter of fact,” laughed Guy, delighted that
she should remember what he had told her about the manners and customs
of his parents, “they talked of nothing else at one time. It made them
feel that at last they were able to understand and sympathise with what
my generation was after. My father began one night at dinner, ‘Very
interesting book that, Guy, _If Winter Comes_—very well written book,
very clever; curious book—painful though, painful!’ And my mother tried
to discuss some one called Mabel’s character with me. It was no good my
saying I hadn’t read it—it only made them despise me and think I wasn’t
_dans le mouvement_, after all.”
“There, you see!” laughed Teresa; “Well, what _are_ you reading in
Spanish?”
“Calderon’s _Autos_,” and then he launched into one of his excited
breathless disquisitions: “As a matter of fact, I was rather disappointed
at first. I knew, of course, that they were written in glorification of
the Eucharist and that they were bound to be symbolic, and ‘flowery and
starry,’ and all the rest of it—man very tiny in comparison with the sun
and the moon and the stars and the Cross—but the unregenerate part of
me—I suppose it’s some old childhood’s complex—has a secret craving for
_genre_. Every fairy story I read when I was a child was a disappointment
till I came upon Morris’s _Prose Romances_, and then at last I found
three dimensional knights and princesses, and a whole fairy countryside
where things went on happening even when Morris and I weren’t looking at
them: cows being milked, horses being shod, lovers wandering in lanes;
and one knew every hill and every tree, and could take the short cut from
one village to another in the dark. And I’d hoped, secretly, that the
_autos_ were going to be a little bit like that ... that the characters
would be at once abstractions—Grace, the Mosaic Law, and so on—_and_ at
the same time real seventeenth century Spaniards, as solid as Sancho
Panza, gossiping in taverns, and smelling of dung and garlic. But, of
course, I came to see that the real thing was infinitely finer—the
plays of a theologian, a priest who had listened in the confessional to
disembodied voices whispering their sins, and who kept, like a bird in
a cage, a poet’s soul among the scholastic traditions of his intellect,
so that gothic decorations flower all round the figure of Theology, as
in some Spanish Cathedral ...” he paused to take breath, and then added:
“I say—I thought you wouldn’t mind—but I’ve brought you for Christmas an
edition of the _Autos_—I think you’ll like them.”
“Thank you ever so much, I should love to read them,” said Teresa with
unusual warmth.
She had been considerably excited by what he had said. An _auto_ that was
at once realistic and allegorical—there were possibilities in the idea.
She sat silent for a few seconds, thinking; and then she became conscious
of Harry’s voice holding forth on some topic to the group round the fire:
“... really ... er ... a ... er ... TRAGIC conflict. The one thing that
gave colour and ... er ... significance to her drab spinsterhood was
the conviction that these experiences were supernatural. The spiritual
communion ... the ... er ... er ... in fact the CONVERSATIONS with the
invisible ‘Friend’ became more and more frequent, and more and more
... er ... _satisfying_, and indeed of nightly occurrence. Then she
happened to read a book by Freud or some one and ... er ... THE FAT
WAS IN THE FIRE—or, rather, something that undergoes a long period of
smouldering before it breaks into flames was in the fire. Remember, she
was nearly fifty, and a Swiss Calvinist, but she had really _remarkable_
intellectual pluck. Slowly she began to test her mystical experiences by
the theories of Freud and Co., and was forced in time to admit that they
sprang _entirely_ from ... er ... suppressed ... er ... er ... EROTIC
desires. I gather the modern school of psychologists hold all so-called
mystical experiences _do_. Leuba said....”
Here Jollypot, who had been sitting in a corner with her crochet, a
silent listener, got up, very white and wide-eyed, and left the room.
Teresa’s heart contracted. They were ruthless creatures, that English
fire-lit band—tearing up Innocence, while its roots shrieked like those
of a mandrake.
But she had got a sudden glimpse into the inner life of Jollypot.
Then she too, left the room; as for once the talk had been pregnant, and
she wanted to think.
Sexual desires concealed under mystical experiences ... a Eucharistic
play. Unamuno said that the Eucharist owed its potency to the fact that
it stood for immortality, for life. But it was also, she realised, the
“bread not made of wheat,” therefore it must stand for the man-made
things as well—these vain yet lovely yearnings that differentiate him
from flowers and beasts, and which are apt to run counter to the life he
shares with these. The Eucharist, then, could stand either for life, the
blind biological force, or for the enemy of life—the dreams and shadows
that haunt the soul of man; the enemy of that blind biological force,
yes, but also its flower, because it grows out of it....
2
The days of Christmas week passed in walks, dancing, and talk in the
billiard-room.
On Christmas Day Rory had given Concha a volume of the Harrow songs with
music, and to the Doña an exquisite ivory hand-painted eighteenth-century
fan with which she was extremely pleased; indeed, to Teresa’s surprise,
he had managed to get into her good graces, and they had started a little
relationship of their own consisting of mock gallantry on his side and
good-natured irony on hers.
As to Concha, she had taken complete possession of him and seemed to know
as much about his relations—“Uncle Jimmy,” “old Lionel Fane” and the rest
of them—as he did himself; she knew, too, who had been his fag at Harrow
and the names of all his brother officers; in fact, the sort of things
that, hitherto, she had only known about Arnold; and Arnold evidently was
not overpleased.
One day a little incident occurred in connection with Arnold that touched
Teresa very much. Happening to want something out of her room she found
its entry barred by him and the Doña, she superintending, while he was
nailing on to the door a small piece of canvas embroidered with the
Sacred Heart of Jesus.
“We won’t be a minute,” said the Doña serenely; and Arnold, scowling and
rather red, silently finished his job. By the end of the morning there
was not a room in the house that had not the Sacred Heart nailed on its
door. Dick being by this time too cowed to protest.
Teresa knew how Arnold must have loathed it; but he evidently meant by
his co-operation to make it clear once and for all that he was on his
mother’s side in the present crisis as opposed to his father’s.
In connection with the undercurrent of life at Plasencia, another little
scene is perhaps worth recording.
“By the way, Guy,” said Rory, one morning they were sitting in the
billiard-room, “How are Uncle Roger and Aunt May getting on in Pau?”
“Oh, same old thing—mother plays croquet and goes to the English Church,
and father plays golf and goes to the English Club. Sometimes they motor
over to Biarritz to lunch with friends—and that’s about all!”
“Well, and a jolly good life too! That’s how _I’ll_ spend the winter when
I’m old, only I won’t go to Pau, I’ll go to Nice—there’s a better casino.
And what’s more, I’ll drag _you_ there, Guy. It would do him a lot of
good, wouldn’t it, Miss Lane?” and Rory grinned at Teresa, who, staring
at Guy critically through narrowed eyes, said: “I don’t think he’ll need
any dragging. I can see him when he’s old—an extremely _mondain_ figure
in white spats, constantly drinking tea with duchesses, and writing his
memoirs.”
Guy looked at her suspiciously—Mallock, certainly, drank tea with
duchesses and wrote his memoirs; not a bad writer, Mallock! But probably
Teresa despised him; Swinburne had been a dapper _mondain_ figure in his
youth—what did she mean exactly?
“Poor old Guy!” laughed Rory, “I can see him, too—a crusty old Tory,
very severe on the young and their idiotic poetry.... I expect you’re a
violent Socialist, Miss Lane, ain’t you?”
Foolish, conventional young man, going round sticking labels on
every one! Well, so she was labelled “a Socialist,” and that meant
“high-browed,” and undesirable; But why on earth did she mind?
Concha was looking at her with rather a curious little smile. She
sometimes had an uncomfortable feeling that Concha was as good at reading
_her_ thoughts as she was as reading Concha’s.
“She is a Socialist like you, isn’t she, Guy?” persisted Rory.
“He means an intellectual character,” explained Guy, not ill-pleased.
“No, but you do want to blow us all up, don’t you?”
“Do I?” said Teresa coldly.
“Well, I believe I’m a Bolshevik myself, a revolution would be my only
chance of getting into the Guards. ‘Hell-for-leather Dundas of the Red
Guards!’ It sounds like a hero by ... that mad woman our mothers knew in
Florence, Guy—what was her name?... Yes, like a hero in a Ouida novel.”
“Do I hear you say, Dundas, that you think yourself like one of ... er
... Ouida’s heroes?” said Harry Sinclair, coming in at that moment with
Dick.
“Well, sir, modesty forbids me to say so in so many _words_,” grinned
Rory.
“There used to be an aged don at Cambridge,” continued Harry,
“half-blind, wholly deaf, and with an ... er ... game ... LEG, and when
he was asked to what character in history he felt most akin he answered
... er ... er ‘ALCIBIADES’!”
“That was old Potter, wasn’t it? I remember ...” began Dick, but Concha
interrupted him by exclaiming eagerly: “What a good game! Let’s play
it—history or fiction, but we mustn’t say our own, we must guess each
other’s’—Rory is settled, he thinks himself like a Ouida hero ...” and
she suddenly broke off, turned red, and looked at Teresa with that
glazed opaque look in her eyes, that with her was a sign of mingled
embarrassment and defiance.
Teresa’s heart began to beat a little faster; who would Concha say she,
Teresa, thought herself like? And who would _she_ say Concha thought
herself like? It would perhaps be a relief to them both to say, for
once, things that were definitely spiteful—a relief from this continual
X-raying of each other’s thoughts, and never a word said.
“Who does Guy think himself like? Some one very wicked and
beautiful—don’t you, Guy?” said Rory.
“Dorian Gray!” said Arnold, looking up from his book with a meaning grin.
“Oh no, no, I’m sure it’s some very literary character,” said Concha.
“Shelley?” suggested Teresa; but she gave the little smile that always
seemed scornful to Guy.
“Percy Bysshe ... is she right, Guy?”
“No,” said Guy sulkily.
“Shakespeare—Tennyson—Burns? Who, then?”
“Oh, Keats if you like—when he was in love with Fanny Brawne,” cried Guy
furiously, and, seizing the book that lay nearest to him, he began to
read it.
“I say, this _is_ a lovely game—almost as good as cock-fighting!” said
Rory: “What about Mr. Lane? I wonder who _you_ think you are like, sir.”
Tactful young man, so anxious to make his host feel at home!
Dick, who had been dreading this moment, looked sheepish. It seemed
to him that the forehead of every one in the room slid sideways like
a secret panel revealing a wall upon which in large and straggling
characters were chalked up the words: DON JUAN. And Teresa was saying to
herself: “Would it be vulgar ... should I dare to say Lydia Bennett? And
who will she say? Hedda Gabler?”
She had forgotten what the game really was and had come to think it
consisted of telling the victim the character that you _yourself_ thought
they resembled.
“Who does Mr. Lane think he’s like?” repeated Rory.
“Drake, I should think,” said Guy, who never sulked for long.
Dick felt unutterably relieved.
“Is that right, sir?”
“That will do—Drake if you like,” said Dick, with a laugh.
“A Drake somewhat ... er ... cramped in his legitimate activities through
having ... er ... married an ... er ... SPANISH LADY,” said Harry.
What the devil did he mean exactly by that? Surely the Doña hadn’t been
blabbing to him—Harry of all people! But she was capable of anything.
“Oh yes, the Doña would see to it he didn’t singe the King of Spain’s
beard twice,” laughed Concha.
Oh yes, of course, _that_ was it! He laughed aloud with relief.
And then followed a discussion, which kept them busy till luncheon, as
to whether it could be proved by Mendelism that the frequent singeing
of Philip II.’s beard was the cause of his successors having only an
imperial.
So here was another proof of the fundamental undramaticness of life as
lived under civilised conditions—for ever shying away from an emotional
crisis. As usual, the incident had been completely without point; and on
and on went the frivolous process of a piece of thistle-down blown by a
summer breeze hither, thither, nowhere, everywhere.
3
Before the party broke up there was a little dance at Plasencia. It was
to be early and informal so as not to exclude “flappers”; for, as is
apt to be the way with physically selfish men, Arnold found grown-up
young ladies too exacting to enjoy their society and preferred teasing
“flappers.” Fair play to him, he never flirted with them; but he
certainly liked them.
So the drawing-room was cleared of furniture, a scratch meal of
sandwiches substituted for dinner, and by eight o’clock they were
fox-trotting to the music of a hired pianist and fiddler.
The bare drawing-room, robbed of all the accumulated accessories of
everyday life, was the symbol of what was happening in the souls of the
dancers—Dionysus had come to Thebes, and, at the touch of his thyrsus,
the city had gone mad, had wound itself round with vine tendrils, was
flowing with milk and honey; where were now the temples, where the
market-place?
Teresa, steered backwards and forwards by Bob Norton, felt a sudden
distaste for mediæval books—read always with an object; a sudden
distaste, too, for that object itself, which was riding her like a hag.
Why not yield to life, become part of it, instead of ever standing
outside of it, trying to snatch with one’s hands fragments of it, as it
went rushing by?
Whirled round in life’s diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees.
That was good sense; that was peace. But away from Plasencia ... yes, one
must get away from Plasencia.
For once, they were all beset by the same desire—to slip off silently one
night, leaving no trace.
“Why shouldn’t I really get that yacht and slip off with Hugh ... to
Japan, say ... and no one know? It’s a free country and I’ve got the
money—there’s nothing to prevent me doing what I want. To sail right away
from Anna ... and ... and ... _every one_,” thought Dick, as, rather
laboriously, he gambolled round with the young wife of a rich stockbroker
who had a “cottage” near Plasencia.
As to Concha—she had sloughed her own past and present and got into
Rory’s—she seemed to _be_ Rory: lying in his study at Harrow after
cricket sipping a water-ice, which his fag had just brought him from the
tuck-shop ... “hoch!” and a tiny slipper shoots up into the air—“the
beautiful Miss Brabazons,” the belles of the Northern Meeting!...
“H.M. the King and the Prince of Wales motored over from Balmoral for
the—Highland games. There were also present ...” flags flying, bands
playing ... hunting before the War—zizz! Up one goes—over gates, over
hedges ... no gates, no hedges, no twelve-barred gates of night and
day, no seven-barred gates of weeks, just galloping for ever over the
boundless prairie of eternity—far far away from Plasencia and them all.
Only the dowagers, watching the dancers from a little conservatory off
the drawing-room, had their roots deep in time and space—a row of huge
stone Buddhas set up against a background of orchids and bougainvillea
and parroquet-streaked jungle, which were their teeming memories of the
past; but set up immovably, and they would see to it that no one should
escape.
“There!” said Rory, gently pushing Concha into a chair, “where’s your
cloak?”
“Don’t want one.”
“Oh, you’d better. Which is your room? Let me go and fetch you one.”
“But I tell you I don’t _want_ one!”
“Oh, by the way, I meant to ask you, why did you walk on ahead with
Arnold this afternoon?”
“Did I?”
“Of course you did. I had to walk with your sister—she scared me to
death.”
Then there was a pause.
“Concha!”
“Hallo!”
He gave a little laugh, took her in his arms, and kissed her several
times on the mouth.
“You didn’t kiss me back.”
“Why should I?”
“I don’t believe you know how to!”
“_Don’t_ I?”
He kissed her again.
“What a funny mouth you’ve got—it’s soft like a baby’s.”
“You’d better be careful—some one might come along, you know, at any
moment.”
“Would they be angry?... You _are_ a baby!”
“Rory! The music’s stopping.”
Rory began talking in a loud voice: “Well, as I was saying, Chislehurst
golf is no good to me at all. I like a course where you have plenty of
room to open your shoulders.”
“You _are_ a fool!” laughed Concha.
The next dance was a waltz.
“The _Blue Danube_! I’m _so_ glad the waltz is coming into fashion
again,” said Mrs. Moore, tapping her black-satin-slippered foot in time
to the tune, and watching her sixteen-year old daughter Lettice whirl
round with Arnold.
“Yes,” said the Doña, “I’m fed up with rag-time.”
“Dear Mrs. Lane, these slangy expressions sound so deliciously quaint
when you use them—don’t they, Lady Norton? And that reminds me, I’ve had
such a _killing_ letter from Eben....”
But no one listened, and soon she too was silent; for, at the strains of
the _Blue Danube_, myriads of gold and blue butterflies had swarmed out
of the jungle and settled on the Buddhas. They still stared in front of
them impassively, they were still firm as rocks; but they were covered
with butterflies.
Mais le vert paradis des amours enfantines
Les courses, les chansons, les baisers, les bouquets
Les violons vibrant derrière les collines,
Avec les brocs de vin le soir dans les bosquets
—Mais le vert paradis des amours enfantines,
L’innocent paradis, plein de plaisirs furtifs,
Est-il déjà plus loin que l’Inde ou que la Chine?
Peut-on le rappeler avec des cris plaintifs,
Et l’animer encore d’une voix argentine,
L’innocent paradis plein de plaisirs furtifs?
“Waltzes are milestones of sentimentality,” said Guy shrilly to Teresa,
as they made their way onto the loggia to sit out the remainder of the
dance, “milestones of sentimentality, because a lady can be dated by the
fact of whether it’s the _Blue Danube_, or the _Sourire d’Avril_, or the
_Merry Widow_, that glazes her eye and parts her lips—taking her back
to that charming period when the heels of Mallarmé’s _débutantes_ go
tap, tap, tap, when in a deliciously artificial atmosphere sex expands
and, like some cunning hunted insect, makes itself look like a flower;
I haven’t yet read _A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleur_, but I’m sure
it’s an exquisite description of that period—débutantes, and waltzes, and
camouflaged sex. Its very title is like the name of a French waltz—or
scent.”
Teresa smiled vaguely.... Why had she scorned that period, barricading
herself against it with books, and Bach and ... myths? When she was old
and heard the strains of ... yes, the _Chocolate Soldier_ ought to be her
milestone ... well, when she hears the _Chocolate Soldier_, if her eyes
glaze and her lips part it will be out of mere bravado.
But something was happening ... what was it Guy was saying?
“I never think of anything else but you ... you’re the only person whose
mind I admire ... even if you don’t realise it you _must_ see that you
ought to.”
“Oh, Guy, what do you want? What is it all about?” she gasped helplessly.
“Well then, could you? You see, it seems to me so obvious and....”
“Marry you?”
“Yes.”
She saw herself established in St. James’s Street polishing his brasses,
rub, rub, rub; polishing his verses perhaps too ... oh no, he didn’t like
verses to be polished—roughening them, then, with emery-paper ... oh no,
that polished too ... what was it, then, that roughened?
She began to giggle ... oh Lord, _that_ had done it! Now he was
furious—and with reason.
“... Your arrogance ... simply unbearable.... I don’t know _what_ you
think ... oh it’s damnable!” and he began to sob.
She took his hand and stroked it, murmuring: “Hush! old Guy ... I wasn’t
laughing at you, it was just one of those sudden silly thoughts that have
nothing to do with anything. Nothing seems real to-night. I’m really very
very grateful.”
“Will you then?” and his face brightened.
“No, no, Guy—I _can’t_. It would be so ... so ... meaningless.”
Then fresh sobs, and like a passionate, proud child he tore away his
hands, and plunged into the dark garden. What could she do? She could
only leave him to get over it.
Life was never still; though, like the earth, one did not feel it move
... one’s human relations were ever shifting, silently, like those of the
constellations. Suddenly one night one looks up at the sky and realises
that Orion has reappeared and that the Great Bear is now standing on the
tip of his tail, and one gasps at the vast spaces that have been silently
traversed; and it was with the same sensation of awe that she looked back
on the past year and realised the silent changes in the inter-relations
of her little group: her parents’ relations, her own and Concha’s, her
own and Guy’s.
A low voice came from the morning-room; it was the Doña’s: “Whatever
Pepa’s opinions or wishes may have been during the latter part of her
life, they are the same as mine now.”
“Upon my soul! You evidently ... er ... er have sources of ... er ...
INFORMATION closed to the rest of us—I really cannot ... er ... COPE with
such statements” and Harry came out on to the loggia, evidently irritated
beyond endurance. He was followed by the Doña; but when she saw Teresa
and realised that the opportunity for a _tête-à-tête_ was over, having
told her to get a wrap, she went in again.
Harry walked up and down for a few seconds, in silence, and then
ejaculated ironically: “Remarkable woman, your mother!” “Very!” said
Teresa coldly; she did not choose to discuss her with Harry.
“Of course, in the light of ... er ... modern psychology it’s as clear
as a pike-staff,” he went on, as usual not reacting to the emotional
atmosphere, “she ... er ... doesn’t ... er ... KNOW it, of course, but
she’s putting up this Catholicism as a barrier to your marriages—every
mother is jealous of her daughters.”
Oh, these scientific people! Always right, and, yet, at the same time,
always absurdly wrong! For the real sages, the people who _live_ life,
these ugly little treasures found by the excavators miles and miles and
miles down into the human soul, are of absolutely no value ... horrid
little flints that have long since evolved into beautiful bronze
axes ... it was only scientists that cared about that sort of thing.
For all practical purposes it was an absolute libel on the Doña—but,
_dramatically_, it might be of value; for dramatic values have nothing to
do with truth.
“Our dance, I think, Miss Lane. I couldn’t find you anywhere”; it was
Rory’s voice.
He led her into the drawing-room, and they began to move up and down,
round and round, among the other solemn and concentrated couples, all
engaged in too serious an exercise to indulge in any conversation beyond
an occasional: “Sorry!” “Oh, _sorry_!”
When they passed Concha, she and Rory smiled at each other, and he said:
“Telegrams: _Oysters_.”
That meant: “We are both rather hungry, but never mind, it won’t be long
now till supper—Hurray!”
How humiliating it was to be so familiar with their jargon!
She looked at him; his eyes were stern, and fixed on some invisible
point beyond her shoulder, his lips were slightly parted. She was no
more to him than the compass with which Newton in Blake’s picture draws
geometrical figures on the sand.
Then the music stopped.
“Shall we sit here?”
He had become human again.
“It _has_ been a lovely dance—I do think it’s so awfully good of you all
to have me down for Christmas.”
How many times exactly had she heard that during the last week? Once
before to herself, twice to the Doña, once to her father, once to
Jollypot.
“Oh, we liked having you. We generally have lots of people for Christmas.”
“Well, one couldn’t have a more Christmassy house. It always seems to me
like the house one suddenly comes upon in a wood in a fairy story. One
expects the door to be opened by a badger in livery.”
Again that bastard Fancy! The same sort of thing had occurred to her
herself—_when_ she was a child; but the imagination of a man ought to be
different from the fancy of a child.
“It’s the sort of house one can imagine a Barrie play happening in, don’t
you think? Did you see _Dear Brutus_?”
“Yes; I did.”
“I didn’t like the girl much—what was her name? Margaret, wasn’t it? I’m
sure her papa starved her—I longed to take her and give her a good square
meal.” Pause.
She wondered what it would feel like to be the sort of young woman who
could interest and allure him. And what were the qualities needed? It
could not be brains, for she had plenty of brains; nor looks, for she was
good-looking. But nothing about her stirred him; she knew it.
“Of course, it’s an extraordinary hard life, an actress’s,” he went on,
“it’s a wonder that they keep their looks as they do. It’s a shame! Women
seem handicapped all along the line,” and he looked at her expectantly,
as if sure of her approval at last, “It can’t be much fun being a woman,
unless one were a very beautiful one ... or a very clever one, of
course,” he added hastily.
Well, the cat was out of the bag: she was plain as well as undesirable.
Suddenly, Dionysus and his rout vanished from Thebes; temples and
market-place sprang up again, and she remembered joyfully that a fresh
packet of books ought to arrive to-morrow from the London Library.
4
Most of the guests not staying in the house had left by midnight; but
after that, when the party had dwindled down to four or five couples, the
pianist and fiddler, mellowed by champagne and oysters, were persuaded to
give first one “extra,” then another, then another.
The pianist, a very anæmic-looking young woman, with a touching absence
of class-jealousy, was loath to disappoint them, and, as far as she was
concerned, they might have gone on having extras till broad daylight; but
the fiddler “turned stunt.”
“I’m a family man” he protested good-humouredly, but firmly (“You’ll
have to wait till to-morrow night for _that_, old bean!” Rory whispered
to Arnold, “your wife wouldn’t like it at two o’clock in the morning”),
“But I don’t mind ending up with _John Peel_, as it’s Christmas time,”
whereupon, with a wink to the pianist, he struck up with that most
poetical of tunes, and, the men of the party bellowing the words, they
all broke into a boisterous gallop.
Rory went up to the Doña: “You _must_ dance this with me, please!”
She yielded with a smile; but her eye caught Arnold’s, and they both
remembered that it had been Pepa who used always to play _John Peel_ at
the end of their dances.
The tune ended with what means to be a flourish, but really is a wail,
and they stood still, laughing and breathless—a little haggard, a little
dishevelled.
“Where’s Guy?” said some one.
“He went up to bed; he had a headache,” said Arnold, glaring fiercely at
Teresa.
Out in the view, from behind the two-ply curtains of silk and of night,
a cock crew, and then another; and what they said was just _John Peel_
over again—that ghosts wander in dewy English glades, and that the Past
is dead, dead, dead.
5
Concha came into Teresa’s room to have her gown unfastened: “You looked
heavenly,” she said, “I love you in mauve.”
Teresa tugged at the hooks in silence; and then said: “Is it impossible
to teach Parker to unsqueeze hooks when they come back from Pullar’s?”
“Quite. I nearly died with the effort of getting them to fasten.”
Then outside there was a familiar muffled step, and a knock. In the
mirror Teresa saw a look of annoyance pass over Concha’s face.
In came the Doña, in a white dressing-gown, her face illuminated by the
flame of her candle, and looking not unlike one of Zurburán’s Carthusian
monks.
“Well?” she said.
“Well darling,” answered Concha, with exaggerated nonchalance, adding to
Teresa, “_won’t_ they undo?”
The Doña put down her candle, and seated herself heavily on the bed.
“Oh, damn them! Won’t they undo? Haven’t you any scissors?”
“That young Dundas seemed to enjoy himself,” said the Doña.
No answer.
Then the hooks yielded at last to the leverage of the nail-scissors, and
Concha kissed the Doña and Teresa and went back to her own room.
The Doña sat on.
“Do you think he is attracted by Concha?”
“Who?”
“That young Dundas.”
“I really don’t know ... do you want him to be?”
“Do I want him to be? What has that to do with it? I want to know if he
_is_.”
“Do you mean does he want to marry her?”
“Marry her! Englishmen never think of marriage ... they just what you
call ‘rag round’; they can’t even fall in love.”
Teresa scrutinised her for a few seconds, and then she said: “I believe
you are furious with every man who doesn’t fall in love with one of your
daughters;” and she suddenly remembered a remark of Concha’s made in a
moment of intense irritation: “The Doña ought to keep a brothel—then she
would be really happy.”