1
Anna and Jasper came to Plasencia for their Easter holidays, and towards
the end of April Concha and Rory got back from Scotland. It was the first
time Teresa had seen them together since their engagement, and their
relationship was so comfortable and intimate that, to her, it almost
smacked of incest.
As to the Doña, the presence of Rory in the flesh seemed to undo all the
reconciliatory work of the past two months, and her attitude once more
became uncompromising, her heart bitter and heavy.
Harry and Arnold came down for the last “week-end” in April; so they were
now quite a big party again, and Teresa did not see so much of David.
It was dear that Concha was bursting with the glories of Drumsheugh;
but she had no one to tell them to; the Doña and Teresa were out of the
question, and Arnold had sulked with her ever since her engagement.
However, one afternoon when they were sitting in the loggia, she
could keep it in no longer: “I simply _love_ Drumsheugh,” she began;
Arnold immediately started talking to Harry, but to her surprise she
found Teresa clearly prepared to listen sympathetically. “It isn’t
a ‘stately home of England’ sort of thing, you know, but square and
plain and solid, and full of solid Victorian furniture; and the
portraits aren’t ruffles and armour and that sort of thing, but
eighteenth-century-judges-sort-of-people. There’s a perfectly divine
Raeburn of Rory’s great-great-grandmother playing ring-o’-roses with
her children. It’s altogether _very_ eighteenth century ... the sort of
house one can imagine Dr. Johnson staying in, when he was in Scotland,
and very much enjoying the claret and library. And there’s no ‘culture’
about it—it’s filled with cases of stuffed birds, and stuffed foxes and
things....”
“_What_, Concha?” cried Arnold, breaking off in the middle of his
sentence to Harry, “did you say _stuffed foxes_? I never thought much of
the Scotch, but I didn’t think they were as bad as that. Do you really
shoot foxes in Scotland, Dundas?”
Since the engagement he had gone back to calling Rory, “Dundas.”
Rory was speechless with laughter: “Oh, Concha! What _are_ you talking
about?” he spluttered, and poor Concha, who, since her engagement, had
gone in for being a sporting character, blushed crimson.
For the first time Teresa saw something both pretty and touching
in Concha’s attitude to life: as a little girl-guide, an Anna, in
fact, passionately collects, badges for efficiency in heterogeneous
activities—sewing, playing _God Save the King_ on the piano, gardening,
tennis, reciting Kipling’s _If_; so Concha collected the various
manifestations of “grown-up-ness”—naughty stories, technical and sporting
expressions, scandal about well-known people; and it was all, really, so
innocent.
“You got on very well with Colonel Dundas, didn’t you?” she said, turning
the subject to what she knew was a source of gratification.
“Oh, yes, she scored heavily with Uncle Jimmy,” said Rory proudly. “He’s
in love with her—_really_ in love with her. But I don’t know whether
that’s much of a triumph—he’s the bore of ten clubs.”
Concha began to count on her fingers: “The Senior, the Travellers’,
Hurlingham, ... er....”
“The Conservative Club, Edinburgh,” prompted Rory.
“The Conservative, Edinburgh—what’s the St. Andrews one?”
“ROYAL and ANCIENT, you goose!” he roared.
“Oh, yes, of course, Royal and Ancient. Then the North Berwick one—that’s
six. Then there’s....”
At that moment the Doña arrived for tea, cutting them off for the time
from this grotesque source of pride; as in her presence there could be no
talk of Drumsheugh and “Uncle Jimmy.”
“Yes, the garden _is_ forging ahead. What I like is roses; do you think
this will be a good year for them? But I do like them to have a smell.”
“Guy says that Shakespeare is wrong and that there _is_ something in a
name, and that the reason they don’t smell so sweet now is that they’re
called by absurd names like ‘Hugh Dickson’ and ‘Frau Karl Druschke.’”
“Well, how does he explain that Frau Karl has been called ‘Snow Queen’
since the War and still hasn’t any smell?”
“By the way, where _is_ Guy? We haven’t seen him since the dance at
Christmas. Do you remember how queer he was the next morning?”
“He’s been in Spain, but he should be back soon,” said Arnold, with a
resentful look at Teresa.
Then Anna and Jasper trotted across the lawn and on to the loggia, both
very grubby; Jasper carrying a watering-can.
“We’ve been gardening,” said Anna proudly.
“That ... er ... is a ... er ... self-evident proposition that needs no
demonstration, as the dogs’-meat man said to the cook when she ... er ...
told him he wasn’t a gentleman,” quoted Harry.
“Darlings, isn’t it time for your own tea? And what _would_ Nanny say?
You really oughtn’t to come to grown-up tea without washing your hands,”
protested Teresa—in vain; for the Doña had already provided each of them
with a large slice of cake.
Then Jasper’s roving eye perched upon David, meditatively stirring his
tea. He began to snigger: “Silly billy! _You_ can’t make flowers grow.
Anna says so.”
“Jasper! Don’t be so silly,” said Anna, reddening.
“But you _said_ so,” whined Jasper.
“What’s this? What’s it all about?” laughed Rory.
“Nothing,” said Anna sulkily.
“Now then; out with it, old thing!”
“Yes, darling, why should Mr. Munroe make flowers grow?”
“Oh, well,” and Anna blushed again, “You see, it was about holy water.
I thought if it was _really_ like that Mr. Munroe might bless the water
in our watering-can, so that they’d all grow up in the night ... just to
show whether it was true or not, you know.”
Harry looked round with an unmistakable expression of paternal pride;
Dick, Arnold, Concha and Rory exploded into their several handkerchiefs;
Jollypot murmured, “Dear little girl!” The Doña looked sphinx-like; and
Teresa glanced nervously at David.
“I’m awfully sorry, Anna, but I fear I can’t do that for you—for one
thing, I’m not yet a priest,” he answered, blushing crimson.
“By the way, Mr. Munroe, when _are_ you going to be ordained?” asked the
Doña suavely. “Let me see ... it _could_ be in September, Our Lady’s
birth month, couldn’t it? I read an article by a Jesuit Father the
other day about the ‘Save the Vocations Fund,’ and he said there was no
birthday gift so acceptable to Our Lady as the first mass of a young
priest.”
The Doña rarely if ever spoke upon matters of faith in public; so
Teresa felt that her words had a definite purpose, and were spoken with
concealed malice.
“Good God!” muttered Harry; then, turning to Arnold, he said—“it’s ...
it’s ... _astounding_. Birthday presents of young priests! It’s like the
Mountain Mother and her Kouretes!” He spoke in a very low voice; but
Teresa overheard.
The smell of this half ridiculous, half sinister, little incident soon
evaporated from the atmosphere, and the usual foolish, placid Plasencia
talk gurgled happily on:
“Well, if this weather goes on we ought soon to be getting the
tennis-court marked ... oh Lord! I wish it was easier to get exercise in
this place.”
“Well, I’m sure Anna and Jasper would be only too delighted to race you
round the lawn.”
“Oh, by the way, didn’t you say there was a _real_ tennis court somewhere
in this neighbourhood?”
“Yes, but it belongs to a noble lord ... oh, by the way, Dad, have you
had that field rolled? If there’s to be hay in it this year, it really
ought to be, you know.”
“Yes, yes, but a heifer’s far more valuable after she’s calved, far
better wait.”
“Does Buckingham Palace make its own light or get it from the town?”
“From the town, I should think.”
“What happens then if there’s a strike of the electric light people?”
“Oh, what a great thought! Worthy of Anna.”
“It’s a curious thing that ... er ... a reference to ... er ... LIQUID
in any form inevitably tickles an undergraduate: if I ... er ... er ...
happen to remark in a lecture that ... er ... MOISTURE is necessary to a
plant, the room ... er ... ROCKS WITH LAUGHTER FOR FIVE MINUTES!”
And so on, and so on.
But for Teresa, the shadow of that _other_ plot had fallen over the
silver and china and tea-cups, over the healthy English faces, over the
tulips and wallflowers in the garden; and over the quiet view, made by
the sowing and growing and reaping of the sunbrowned rain-washed year;
but it has a ghost—the other; shadowy Liturgical Year, whose fields are
altars in dim churches and whose object, by means of inarticulate chants
and hierophantic gestures, is to blow some cold life into a still-born
Idea, then to let it die, then, by a febrile reiteration of psalms and
prophecies, to galvanise it again into life.
And David, sitting there a little apart, though he could talk ably about
business and economics and agriculture—he was merely a character in the
Plot. He was like a ghost, but a ghost that dwarfed and unsubstantialised
the living. He was a true son of that race—her race, too, through the
“dark Iberians”—who, carrying their secret in their hearts, were driven
by the Pagans into the fastnesses of the hills, the hills whence, during
silent centuries, they drew the strength of young men’s dreams, the
strength of old men’s visions, and within whose cup quietly, unceasingly,
they plied their secret craft: turning bread into God. And though in
time St. Patrick (so says one of the legends), betrayed the secret to
Ireland, and St. Columba, his descendant in Christ, to England, and they,
the men of the Scottish hills, lost all memory of it in harsh and homely
heresies, yet once it had been theirs—theirs only.
Yes; but it was all nonsense—a myth, a plot. She was becoming hag-ridden
again; she must be careful.
2
One afternoon in the beginning of May, when Teresa came on to the loggia
at tea-time, she found no one there but David, sitting motionless. He
looked at her gravely, and said:
“The doctor came this afternoon.”
“Did he? What did he say?”
“He said I was all right now.”
“That’s splendid.”
“So ... I must be getting back.”
“When?”
“Well, you see, I’ve no right to stay a minute longer than I need. And so
... if it’s convenient ... well, really, I should be going to-morrow.”
“Should you?” And there was the minimum of conventional regret in her
voice, “I’ll tell Rendall to pack for you.”
“I can pack for myself ... thank you,” he said gruffly.
They were silent. His eyes absently swept over the view, then the
border, and then lingered for a few seconds on the double row of ancient
hawthorns, which, before the days of Plasencia and its garden, had stood
on either side of a lane leading to a vanished village, and then fastened
on the gibbous moon, pressed, like the petal of a white rose, against the
blue sky, idly enjoying, as it were from the wings, the fragrance and
tempered sunshine, while it waited for its cue to come on and play for
the millionth millionth time its rôle of the amorous potent ghost.
“You’ve all been very kind to me ... you, specially,” he said.
“Oh ... it’s been a pleasure,” she answered dully.
“I’d like—if you could do with me—to come back for a wee visit in the
summer ... before I say my first mass.” Then he added, with a little
smile, “but maybe your mother won’t want to have me.”
“Oh ... I’m sure ... she’d be delighted,” she said, with nervous little
catch in her voice.
He looked at her, squarely, sombrely: “No, she wouldn’t be delighted ...
but I’ll come all the same,” and he gave a short laugh.
“Are you ... you ... when are you going to be ordained?”
“It will be the beginning of October, I think,” and again his eyes
wandered absently over the view, the border, the hedge of hawthorn; and
her eyes followed his.
The Plot ... the Popish Plot.... “Please to remember the fifth of
November,” ... how many times Guy Fawkes must have been burned in that
vanished village! On frosty nights when the lamp-light and fire-light
glowed through the cosy red curtains of the inn parlour, and the boys
wore red worsted mufflers, and stamped to keep their feet warm, and
held their hands out to the flame of the bonfire. For they had been
wise English people who had lived a hundred years ago in that vanished
village; _they_ had known what it all came to: that there was Spring,
Summer, Autumn, Winter, then Spring again; that there was good ale to be
had at the Saracen’s Head, for the paying; that Goody Green, who kept the
shop, gave short measure, but this did not cause her to be pinched by
elves, nor to come to a bad end; that the parson was a kind man, though
a wheezy one, and liked his glass of ale, and that whatever he might say
in his sermons, the daffodil, at any rate, _died_ on Easter Day; that
very few of the wives and mothers had gone to Church maids, but they were
none the worse for that, while Marjory from the farm up by Hobbett’s
Corner hadn’t gone to Church at all, because she had been seduced by a
fine young gentleman staying at the Saracen’s Head to shoot wild duck,
and that, in consequence, she had gone away to London, where she had
married a grocer’s apprentice, who became in time an alderman, and drove
her about in a fine coach; that William Hobson ran away to sea, and was
never heard of again; that Stan Huckle had emigrated to America, whence
he wrote that he had become a Methodist, because they had strawberry
festivals with lumps of frozen cream in their chapel; in fact, that it
was no use seeking for meanings and morals, because there were none.
And then, one Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter, one took to one’s bed,
and after a time one’s toes grew cold, and the room grew dark, and one
heard a voice saying: “Paw ole man! The end’s near now. Well, it’ll be
a blessed release—reely.” And that was all, except, before the dim eyes
closed, a memory ... or was it the sudden scent of May? Once long ago,
in that hawthorn lane, beneath the moon, migratory dreams had seemed to
flock together from all quarters like homing birds, and the Future had
suddenly sprung up, and all the stars snowed down on it, till it too was
a hawthorn bush covered with a million small white blossoms, in which,
next spring, the birds would build their nests.
“I have noticed,” she said, “the Scotch have a great sense of the
‘sinfulness of sin.’”
“Yes ... I think that’s true,” he answered.
“St. Paul invented sin, I suppose; Jesus didn’t.”
“St. Paul invent sin! You know that’s not true—it’s as old as apples,”
and he smiled down on her with that tender, indulgent smile that made her
feel like a little girl.
* * * * *
At tea he told the Doña what the doctor had said:
“And so I’ll not trespass any longer on your hospitality, Mrs. Lane,”
he added, with the laborious gentility probably learnt from his aunt in
Inverness.
“Oh, well, it has been a great pleasure having you,” said the Doña, with
more geniality than she had shown him for weeks, “I’m sure we shall all
miss you—shan’t we, Teresa?”
“I’m sure we shall,” she answered, in a calm, cool voice; no tinge of
colour touching her pale cheeks, but a sudden spark of hostility and
triumph leaping into her eyes as she met those of the Doña.
“I should like to come and see you all again, before I say my first
mass,” he said, looking the Doña squarely in the face.
“Oh, yes ... certainly ... but we generally go away in the summer.”
“I was thinking ... the end of September, maybe?”
“Oh, we’ll sure to be back by then,” cut in Dick, always on the alert to
take the edge off his wife’s grudging invitations, “Yes, you come to us
at the end of September; though, for the sake of the children’s garden,
it’s a pity it couldn’t be _after_ your ordination!”
3
The weather was so warm that after dinner they went and sat out upon
the lawn; but about half-past nine the elders found it chilly and went
indoors.
“What about a walk?” said Concha, getting up.
“Good scheme!” said Rory.
“Are you coming, darling?” she asked Teresa, going up to her and laying
her soft cheek against hers.
“No, Puncher, I don’t think so,” she said, smiling up at her; and she
was touched to see how she flushed with pleasure at the old, childish
pet-name, grown, these last years, so unfamiliar.
So Teresa and David sat on together, watching Concha and Rory glimmering
down the border till they melted into the invisible view.
It was a glorious night. The lawns of the sky were dusty with the may of
stars. The moon, no longer flower-like and idle, shone a cold masterpiece
of metallurgy. The air was laden with the perfumes of shrubs and flowers.
Teresa noticed that the perfumes did not come simultaneously, but one
after another; like notes of a tune picked out with one finger—lilac,
may, wallflower....
“I can smell sweetbriar!” cried David suddenly, a strange note of triumph
in his voice, “it’s like a Scotch tune—‘Oh, my love is like a red red
rose’!” and he laughed, a little wildly.
Teresa’s heart began to beat very fast, and seizing at random upon the
first words that occurred to her, she said, “Concha’s like a red red
rose,” and began to repeat mechanically:
“Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.”
“I wasn’t thinking of her ...” he said. “I wasn’t ... Oh, my love is like
the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley ... it’s all the same”; and
then, abruptly: “Look! There’s the moon. She’s always the same—Scotland,
Africa, in the trenches, here. She’s like books—Homer and the rest—in
whatever land you open them, they just say the same thing that they did a
hundred years ago.”
Far away a night-express flashed and shrieked through the view; then an
owl hooted.
“So you are going back to-morrow,” she said.
“Yes.... Hark! There’s the sweetbriar again,” and he began to sing
triumphantly:
“And I will come again, my Love,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.”
He turned and looked at her with strangely shining eyes: “I hear you
through the wall, getting up and going to bed every night and every
morning. It makes me feel sick sometimes, like the smell of iodoform at
the front; that’s a nice way of putting it!” and again he laughed wildly:
“like the smell of sweetbriar! like the smell of the mass! Good-night,”
and he got up hurriedly and strode towards the house. Then he came back:
“Get up and come in,” he said gently; “it’s getting cold and damp,” and
he pulled her up with a cool, firm hand.
They went in, lit their candles in the hall and said good-night at their
bedroom doors; quietly, distantly.