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:

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 Coeur 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?

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.

“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.”