1

That year winter was so mild as to be almost indistinguishable from spring. Imperceptibly, the sparse patches of snow, the hyacinthine patches of blue light lying in hollows of the hills, in wrinkles of the land, turned into small waxen leafless flowers, watching, waiting, in the grass.

By the beginning of February the song of the birds had begun; a symbol that to most hearts is almost Chinese, the symbol and its idea being so indistinguishable that it seems that it is Hope herself who is perched out there on the top of the trees, singing.

One day one would suddenly realise that the mirabelle and purple prunus were actually out; but blossom is such a chilly thing, and it arrives so quietly, that it seemed to make no difference in that leafless world.

Then would come a day when the air was exquisitely soft and the sky very blue; and between the sky and earth there would seem to be a silent breathless conspiracy. Not a bud, only silence; but one knew that something would soon happen. But the next morning, there would be an east wind—skinning the bloom off the view, turning the sky to lead, and making the mirabelle and prunus look, in their leaflessness, so bleak that they might have been the flower (in its sense of essence, embodiment of), of the stern iron qualities of January. The singing of the birds, too, became a cold, cold sound, as if the east wind was, like the ether, a medium through which we hear as well as see. But such days were rare.

Dick loved early spring. When the children were little they used to have “treasure-hunts” at their Christmas parties. They would patter through drawing-room, dining-room, hall, billiard-room, finding, say, an india-rubber duck in the crown of a hat, or a bag of sweets in a pocket of the billiard-table; and Dick’s walks through the grounds in these early spring days were like these “treasure-hunts”; for he would suddenly come upon a patch of violets under a wall, or track down a sudden waft of perfume to a leafless bush starred with the small white blossoms of winter-sweet, or—greatest prize of all—stand with throbbing heart by the hedges of yew, gazing into a nest with four white eggs, while he whispered: “Look Anna!”

For this was the first year that he had gone on these hunts alone.

To tell the truth, he was very tired of his liaison. The lady was expensive, and her conversation was insipid. Also ... perhaps ... his blood was not quite as hot as it had once been.

“Buck up, old bean! What’s the matter with you?” ... The fires within are waning ... where had he heard that expression? Oh yes, it was what Jollypot had said about that old Hun conductor, Richter, when, years ago, they had taken her to Covent Garden to hear Tristan—how they had laughed! It was such a ridiculous expression to use about such a stolid old Hun and, besides, it happened to be quite untrue, Pepa and Teresa had said.

“What’s the matter with you to-night, you juggins?” The fires within are waning ... it was all very well to laugh, but really it was rather a beautiful expression.... Good Lord! It wasn’t so many years before he would be reaching his grand climacteric.... Peter Trevers died then, so did Jim Lane.

One morning he noticed the DoÑa standing stock-still in the middle of the lawn, staring at something through her lorgnette. She was smiling. “What a beautiful mouth she has!” he thought, as he drew nearer.

Softly he came up and stood beside her, and discovered that what she was watching was a thrush that was engaged, by means of a series of sharp rhythmic pecks, in hauling out of the ground the fat white coils of an enormous worm.

It reminded him of a Russian song that his lady had on her gramophone, the Volga Boat Song—the haulers on the Volga sang it as they hauled in the ropes.... I-i-sh-tscho-rass he began to hum; she looked up quickly: “You remember that?”

“What?” he asked nervously. In answer, she sang to the same tune: Ma-ri-nee-ro, and then said: “The sailors used to sing it at Cadiz, that autumn we spent there ... when the children were little.”

“By Jove, yes, so they did!” he answered with a self-deprecatory laugh.

The thrush had now succeeded in hauling up almost the whole length of the worm; and it lay on the ground really very like the coils of a miniature rope. Then suddenly he lost the rhythm, changed his method to a series of little jerky, impatient, ineffectual desultory taps, pausing between each to look round with a bright distrait eye; and, finally, when a few more taps would have finished the job, off he hopped, as if he could bear it no longer.

“Silly fellow!” said the DoÑa.

Dick was racking his brain in the hopes of finding some link between thrushes and Pepa.... “Pepa was very fond of thrushes” ... but was she?... “Pepa with the garden hose was rather like that thrush with the worm” ... and wasn’t there an infant malady called “thrush” ... had Pepa ever had it? no, no, it wouldn’t do; later on an apter occasion would arise for some tender little reconciliatory reminiscence.

“You know, I had little Anna and Jasper baptised into the Catholic Church at Christmas,” said the DoÑa suddenly, and, as it seemed to Dick, quite irrelevantly; but her voice was unmistakably friendly.

“By Jove ... did you really?”

“I did. I arranged it with Father Dawson. The children enjoyed keeping it a secret from Harry.”

Dick chuckled; the DoÑa smiled.

“Next year little Anna will make her first Communion.”

“Does she want to?” Dick had never noticed in his grand-daughter the slightest leanings to religion.

“I don’t know. There are compensations,” and again the DoÑa smiled.

“What? a new Girl-Guide kit?”

“No; the complete works of Scott.”

“My dear Anna—you ought to have been the General of the Jesuits!”

The DoÑa looked flattered.

“Well, Dick,” she went on in a brisk, but still friendly voice, “we really must decide soon—are we going to have pillar-roses or clematis at the back of the borders? Rudge says....”

They spent a happy, amicable morning together; and at luncheon their daughters were conscious that the tension between them had considerably relaxed.

2

One sunny evening, walking in his pleasance, and weaving out of memories chaplets for a dear head, as, in the dead years, he had woven them out of those roses, white and damask, the Knight of La Tour-Landry resolved to compile, from the “matter of England, France and Rome,” a book for the guidance of his motherless daughters.

In that book Teresa read the following exemplum:—

3

Towards the end of February Teresa heard excited voices coming from the DoÑa’s morning-room. She went in and found the DoÑa sitting on the sofa with a white face and blazing eyes, her father nervously shifting the ornaments on the chimneypiece, and Concha standing in the middle of the room and looking as obstinate as Caroline the donkey.

“Teresa!” the DoÑa said in a very quiet voice, “Concha tells us she is engaged to Captain Dundas.”

But of course!... had not Parker said that there was “the marriage likeness” between them—“both with such lovely blue eyes?”

“And he has written to your father—we have just received this letter,” and the DoÑa handed it to her: “From the letter and from her we learn that Captain Dundas has perverted her. She is going to become a Protestant.”

There was a pause; Concha’s face did not move a muscle.

“The reason why she is going to do this is that Captain Dundas would be disinherited by his uncle if he married a Catholic. What do you think of this conduct, Teresa?”

Concha looked at her defiantly.

“I don’t ... I ... if Concha doesn’t believe in it all, I don’t see why she should sacrifice her happiness to something she doesn’t believe in,” she found herself saying.

Concha’s face relaxed for a second, and she flashed her a look of gratitude.

“Teresa!” cried the DoÑa, and her voice was inexpressibly reproachful.

Dick turned round from the chimneypiece: “Teresa’s quite right,” he said; “upon my soul, it would be madness, as she says, to sacrifice one’s happiness for ... for that sort of thing.”

“Dick!”

And he turned from the cold severity of the DoÑa’s voice and eye to a re-examination of the ornaments.

As to Teresa, though his words had been but an echo and corroboration of her own, she was unreasonable enough to be shocked by them; coming, as they did, from a descendant of the men who had witnessed the magnificent gesture with which Ridley and Latimer had lit a candle in England.

“Well, Teresa, as you think the same as Concha ... I don’t know what I have done.... I seem to have failed very much as a mother. It must be my own fault,” and she laughed bitterly.

Concha’s face softened: “DoÑa!” she said appealingly.

“Concha! Are you really going to do this terrible thing?”

“I must ... it’s what Teresa said ... I mean ... it would be so mad not to!”

“I see—it would be mad not to sell Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Well, in that case, there is nothing more to be said ... and you have your father and sister as supporters,” and again she laughed bitterly.

Concha’s face again hardened; and, with a shrug, she left the room.

There was silence for a few seconds, and Teresa glanced mechanically at the letter she held in her hand: “... won’t think it frightful cheek ... go rather gently while I’m at the Staff College ... my uncle ... Drumsheugh ... allowance ... will try so hard to make Concha happy ... my uncle ... Drumsheugh ... hope Mrs. Lane won’t mind frightfully ... the Scottish Episcopal Church ... very high, it doesn’t acknowledge the Pope, that’s the only difference.”

Suddenly the DoÑa began to sob convulsively: “She ... is ... my child, my baby! Oh, none of you understand ... none of you understand! It’s my fault ... I have sinned ... I ought never to have married a Protestant. My Pepa ... my poor Pepa ... she knows now ... she would stop it if she could. Oh, what have I done?”

Teresa kneeled down beside her, and took one of her cold hands in hers; she herself was cold and trembling—she had only once before, at Pepa’s death, seen her mother break down.

Dick came to her other side, and gently stroked her hair: “My dear, you’ve nothing to blame yourself for,” he said, “and there are really lots of good Protestants, you know. And I’ve met some very broad-minded Roman Catholics, too, who took a ... a ... sensible view of it all. These Spanish priests are apt....”

“Spanish priests!” she cried, sitting up in her chair and turning blazing eyes upon him, “what do you know of Spanish priests? You, an elderly Don Juan Tenorio!”

Dick flushed: “Well, I have heard you know ... those priests of yours aren’t all so mighty immaculate,” he said sullenly.

“Dick! How—dare—you?” and having first frozen him with her stare, she got up and left the room.

Dick turned to Teresa: “For heaven’s sake,” he said, “do make your mother see that Protestants are Christians too, that they aren’t all blackguards.”

“It would be no good—that’s really got nothing to do with it,” said Teresa wearily.

“Nothing to do with it? Oh, well—you’re all too deep for me. Anyhow, it’s all a most awful storm in a teacup, and the thing that really makes her so angry is that she knows perfectly well she can do nothing to prevent it. Well, do go up to her now.... I daren’t show my face within a mile ... get her some eau-de-Cologne or something. ’Snice! ’Snice, old man! Come along then, and look at the crocuses,” and, followed by ’Snice, he went through the French window into the garden.

Yes; her father had been partly right—a very bitter element in it all was that the passionate dominant DoÑa could do nothing to prevent the creatures of her body from managing their lives in their own way. What help was it that behind her stood the convictions of the multitudinous dead, the “bishops, priests, deacons, sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, lectors, porters, confessors, virgins, widows, and all the holy people of God?” She and they were powerless to arrest the incoming tide of life; she had identified herself with the dead—with what was old, crazy, and impotent, and, therefore, she was pre-doomed to failure.

Teresa had a sudden vision of the sinful couch (according to the DoÑa’s views) of Concha and Rory, infested by the dead: “I say, Concha, what a frightful bore! They ought to have given us a mosquito-net.” “Oh Lord! Well, never mind—I’m simply dropping with sleep.” And so to bed, comfortably mattressed by the shrouds of the “holy people of God.”

She went up and tried the DoÑa’s door, but found it locked. She felt that she ought next to go to Concha, upon whom, she told herself, all this was very hard—that she, who had merely set out upon the flowery path that had been made by the feet of myriads and myriads of other sane and happy people since the world began, should have her joy dimmed, her laughter arrested, by ghosts and other peoples’ delusions. But, though she told herself this, she could not feel any real pity; her heart was as cold as ice.

However, she went to Concha’s room, and found her sitting at her desk writing a letter—probably a long angry one to that other suffering sage, Elfrida Penn.

“Poor old Concha!” she said, “I’m sorry it should be like this for you.”

Concha—puffed up with the sense of being a symbol of a whole generation—scowled angrily: “Oh, it’s all too fantastic! Thank the Lord I’ll soon be out of all this!”

At times there was something both dour and ungracious about Concha—a complete identification of herself with the unbecoming rÔles she chose to act.

Teresa found herself wondering if, after all, she herself had not more justification with regard to her than recently she had come to fear.