Hope Mirrlees

1

That year there was a marvellous harvest, and by the end of July the sun had burned the wheat into the very quintessence of gold, and every evening for a few moments the reflection of its dying rays transfigured it into a vision, so glorious, so radiant, that Dick, looking up from his fish, would exclaim to the dinner-table, “Good God! Look at the wheat!”

Thus must the memory of the corn of Cana, sown with symbols, heavy with memories and legends, radiant with gleams caught from the Golden City in the skies, have appeared to St. John dying in the desert.

Teresa, having, during her walks in the view, noticed a field of wheat from which a segment had already been cut, so that, with the foil of the flat earth beside it, she was able to see the whole depth of the crop, carried away an impression of the greater thickness of wheat-fields as compared to those containing the other crops; and this impression—strengthened by the stronger colouring of the wheat, for to the memory quality is often indistinguishable from quantity—lingering with her after she had got back to Plasencia, whence the view always appeared pintado, a picture, gave her the delusion of appreciating the actual paint, not merely as a medium of representation, but as a beautiful substance in itself; as one appreciates it in a Monet or a Monticelli.

And all the time, silently, imperceptibly, like the processes of nature, the work of harvest was transforming the picture, till by the end of the first week in August many of the planes of unbroken colour had been dotted into shocks or garnered into ricks. The only visible agent of this transformation was an occasional desultory wain with a green tarpaulin tilt, meandering through the silent fields. Its progress through, and its relation to, or, rather, its lack of relation to, the motionless view gave Teresa an almost eerie sense of incongruity, and made her think of a vase of crimson roses she had sat gazing at one night in the drawing-room. The light of the lamp behind it had changed the substance of the roses into something so translucent that they seemed to be made of a fluid or of light. A tiny insect was creeping in and out among their petals, and as she watched it she had a sense of being mentally out of gear in that she could see simultaneously phenomena belonging to such different planes of consciousness as these static phantom flames and that restless creature of the earth—they themselves, at any rate, could neither feel or see each other.

Then they all went away—the DoÑa and Dick to join Hugh Mallam at Harlech, Jollypot to a sister in Devonshire, and Teresa to Cambridge to stay with Harry Sinclair.

The year began to pay the penalty of its magnificence; for “violent fires soon burn out themselves”; and Teresa, walking down the Backs, or punting up to Byron’s pool, or bicycling among the lovely Cambridgeshire villages, saw everywhere signs of the approach of autumn in reddening leaves and reddening fruits, and there kept running in her head lines from a poem of Herrick’s on Lovers How They Come and Part.

They tread on clouds, and though they sometimes fall,

They fall like dew, and make no noise at all.

So silently they one to th’other come

As colours steale into the Pear or Plum.

While she was there she met Haines (the man who ran the pastoral players). He had heard of her play from Guy, and was so importunate in his requests to be allowed to read it that she finally gave it to him.

Guy had been right—the need to publish or produce was biological: useless to fight against.

Haines liked it, and wanted to set his company working at it at once.

As one hypnotised, she agreed to all of his suggestions: “Cust says you have a lawn with a view which would make an excellent natural background ... I believe it would be the very thing. It’s a piece that needs very few properties—some cardboard trees for the orchard, a few bottles and phials for Trotaconventos’s house, and an altar to give the effect of a chapel in the last scene ... yes, it should be very nice on your lawn, I think folk will like it.”

Did he say folk? But, of course, it would obviously be a favourite word of his.

So, Folk were to take a hand—Folk were to spring up like mushrooms on the lawn of Plasencia, and embody her dreams!

A little shiver went down her spine.

“I am a fool, I am a fool, I am a fool,” she muttered.

2

They all came back to Plasencia at the beginning of September.

The DoÑa received the plan of the play’s being acted on her lawn with indulgent indifference; ever since they had been quite little her children had periodically organised dramatic performances. “Mrs. Moore can bring her Women’s Institute to watch it, and that should leave me in peace for this year, at any rate. I suppose we’d better have the county too, though we did give them cakes and ices enough at Concha’s wedding to last them their lifetime. What is this play of yours about, Teresa?”

“Oh ... old Seville,” she answered nervously, “a nunnery ... and ... and ... there’s a knight ... and there’s an old sort of ... sort of witch.”

“Aha! an old gipsy. And does she give the girls love potions?” And the DoÑa, her head a little on one side, contemplated her, idly quizzical.

“Yes, I daresay she does,” and Teresa gave a nervous laugh, “it’s an auto sacramentÁl,” she added.

The DoÑa looked interested: “An auto sacramentÁl? That’s what they used to play in the old days in the Seville streets at Corpus Christi. Your great-grandmother de La Torre saw one of the last they ever did,” then she began to chuckle, “an auto sacramentÁl on an English lawn! Poor Mrs. Moore and her Women’s Institute! Still, it will be very good for them, I’m sure.”

Would she guess? She was horribly intelligent; but not literary, so there was hope—and yet ... that affective sensitiveness that, having taken the place for centuries of education and intellection, has developed in the women of Spain into what is almost a sixth sense....

Well, if she did guess it would be only what she knew already, and if she chose to draw false conclusions—let her!

But would she recognise herself? The mere possibility of this made Teresa blush crimson. But it was not her fault; she had not meant to draw her like that—it had grown on her hands.

And then she thought no more about it, but wandered through the garden and ripening orchard, muttering absently:

So silently they one to th’other come,

As colours steale into the Pear or Plum.

3

After what seemed an interminable correspondence with Haines, it was settled that he should bring his company to act the play at the end of September. Teresa had tried hard to make the date an earlier or a later one; but it was not to be ... and perhaps ... who could tell?

Mrs. Moore was delighted that her Institute was to see a play about old Spain, and was sure that it would be most educative.

The idea of its being played before Mrs. Moore and a Women’s Institute amused Teresa; after all it was none of her doing, and she liked watching life when it was left free to arrange its own humorous combinations.

Concha and Rory, Arnold, Harry Sinclair, and Guy, all came to stay at Plasencia to see it; and two days before the performance a telegram came from David, asking if they could put him up for a few nights.

The DoÑa frowned as she read it, and Guy looked at Teresa; but Concha and Rory begged that room might be made for him, “It will be his last beano, poor creature,” they said.

Well, if it was to be, it was to be. Once one ceases to strain against the chain of events, the peace of numbness creeps over one’s weary limbs, and anyway ... perhaps....

The day of the performance arrived; it was to begin at two o’clock.

All morning Teresa was busy with preparations; she could not help being amused by the tremendous importance that everything concerning it had for Haines—it was like Parker, who seemed to think the world should stop moving during the fitting-on in the sewing-room of a new blouse.

No one had time to go in the car to meet David; and they had already begun luncheon when he arrived. All the actors were there, so it was a large party, and he sat down on the DoÑa’s left hand, far away from Teresa. She noticed that he ate practically nothing. He looked much stronger than in the spring, and his expression was almost buoyant.

Before the audience arrived, and when the actors were dressing in the two tents pitched on the lawn, they got a few words together.

“I’ve come,” he said, smiling.

“Yes ... you’ve come,” she answered.

“So you’ve been writing a play—‘a chiel amang us takin’ notes’!” and he smiled down on her.

Then Mrs. Moore came bustling across the lawn, shepherding her Institute, a score of working women in their Sunday finery, many of them carrying babies.

“How do you do, Teresa, what a glorious day! I saw dear Concha in church on Sunday; looking so bonny. It must be delightful having her back again. Well, this is a great surprise; we didn’t know you were an author; did we, Mrs. Bolton? We didn’t know Miss Lane wrote; did we? Well, we’re all very much looking forward to it; aren’t we, Mrs. Hedges? I don’t expect you’ve seen many plays before.”

“I saw East Lynne when I was in service in Bedford,” said one woman proudly.

“I’ve seen that on the pictures,” said another.

Then the “gentry” began to arrive: “What a day for your play!” “Oh, what a sight your Michaelmas daisies are! It really is a perfect setting for a pastoral play,” “Are there to be any country dances?” “Ah! you have that single rose too ... it certainly is very decorative, but I thought Mr. Lane said ... ah! there he is, in flannels, wise man!” “Ah, there’s Mistress Concha, looking about sixteen, dear thing!—” “I do think it’s a splendid idea having the Institute women—it’s so good for them, this sort of thing.”

Then fantastic figures began to dart in and out of the two tents: a knight in pasteboard armour, a red cross painted on his shield, a friar with glimpses of scarlet hose under his habit—all of them “holy people of God,” all of them dead hundreds of years ago ... Folk, unmistakably Folk.

Soon the audience was seated; the chattering ceased, and the play began.

This was the play:

THE KEY
AN AUTO SACRAMENTÁL

Scene: Seville. Time: The Reign of Pedro the Cruel.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

Sister Pilar	?	Nuns of the Convent of San Miguel.
Sister Assumcion	?
Four other Nuns of the Convent of San Miguel.
Trotaconventos		a Procuress.
Don Manuel de Lara		a Knight.
Dennys		a French “Trovar.”
Jaime Rodriguez		Confessor to the Nuns of San Miguel.
Don Salomon		a Jewish Doctor.
Pepita	?	Two Children.
Juanito	?
Sancho	?	Alguaciles.
Domingo	?
Pedro	?
Ghost of Don Juan Tenorio.
Ghost of Sister Isabel.
Zuleica		a Moorish Slave.

ACT I

SCENE I

The court of the Convent of San Miguel: its floor is diapered with brightly-coloured tiles; in its centre is a fountain, round which are set painted pots of sweet basil, myrtle, etc., its walls are decorated with arabesques and mottoes in Arabic characters; against one wall is a little shrine containing a wooden virgin. Sister Assumcion is reading aloud from “Amadis de Gaul” to four nuns who are sitting round on rugs embroidering. A Moorish slave is keeping the flies from them with a large fan.

Sister Assumcion (reads): The hand then drew her in, and she was as joyful as though the whole world had been given her, not so much for the prize of beauty, which had been won, as that she had thus proved herself the worthy mate of Amadis, having, like him, entered the forbidden chamber, and deprived all others of the hope of that glory.

(Lays down the book): Well, and so that is the end of the fair Lady Oriana.

First Nun (with a giggle): Has any one yet put this reading of Amadis into their confession?

Sister Assumcion: More fool they then if they have; we may confess it now that we have reached the colophon. Better absolution for a sheep than a lamb. (They laugh).

Second Nun: Ah, well, ’tis but a venial sin, and when one thinks....

Third Nun: Ay, praise be to heaven for the humours that swell old abbesses’ legs and make them keep a-bed!

First Nun: Truly, since she took to her bed, there have been fine doings in this house—it was but yesterday that we were reckoning that it must be close on five months since the Prioress has kept frater.

Third Nun: And Zuleica there, sent all through Lent to the MorerÍa[1] or the Jews’ butcher for red meat ... and she was swearing it was all for her ape Gerinaldo!

First Nun: Yes, and the other night I could have sworn I heard the strains of a Moorish zither coming from her room and the tapping heels of a juglaresa.

Fourth Nun (with a sigh): This house has never been the same since the sad fall of Sister Isabel.

First Nun: Ay, that must have been a rare time! Two brats, I think?

Second Nun: And they say her lying in was in the house of Trotaconventos.

Third Nun: Ah, well, as the common folk, and (with rather a spiteful smile) our dear Sister Assumcion would say: Who sleeps with dogs rises with fleas—and if we sin venially, why, the only wonder is that ’tis not mortally.

Second Nun: Be that as it may, if rumours reach the ears of the Archbishop there’ll be a rare shower of penances at the next visitation. Why, the house will echo for weeks to the mournful strains of Placebo and Dirige, and there will be few of us, I fear, who will not forfeit our black veils for a season.

Fourth Nun: There is one will keep her black veil for the honour of the house.

Sister Assumcion (scornfully): Aye, winds strong enough to level the Giralda could not blow off the black veil of Sister Pilar.

Third Nun: And yet ... she is a Guzman, and the streets are bloody from their swords; they are a wild crew.

Fourth Nun: Yes, but a holy one—St. Dominic was a Guzman.

Sister Assumcion (mockingly): St. Martin! To the rescue of your little bird!... as the common folk and (with an ironical bow to the third nun) Sister Assumcion would say.

First Nun: What’s that?

Sister Assumcion: Why, it is but a little story that I sometimes think of when I look at Sister Pilar.

Second Nun: Let’s hear the story.

Sister Assumcion: Well, they say that one hot day a little martin perched on the ground under a tree, and, spreading out his wings and ruffling his little feathers, as proud as any canon’s lady at a procession in Holy Week, he piped out: Were the sky to fall I could hold it up on my wings! And at that very moment a leaf from the tree dropped on to his head, and so scared the poor little bird that he was all of a tremble, and he spread his wings and away he flew, crying: St. Martin! To the rescue of your little bird! And that is what we say in the country when folks carry their heads higher than their neighbours. (They laugh.)

(Pause.)

Second Nun: And yet has she kindly motions. Do you remember when the little novice Ines was crying her eyes out because she had not the wherewithal to buy her habit, and thought to die with shame in that she would need have to make her profession by pittances? Well, and what must Sister Pilar do but go to the friend of Ines, little Maria Desquivel, whose father, they say, is one of the richest merchants in Seville, feigning that for the good of her soul she would fain consecrate a purse of money, and some sundries bequeathed her by an aunt, to the profession of two novices, and said that she would take it very kind if Maria and Ines would be these two. And so little Ines was furnished out with habit, and feather-bed, and quilt all powdered with stags’ heads and roses, and a coffer of painted leather, and a dozen spoons, and a Dominican friar to preach the sermon at her profession, without expending one blush of shame; in that she shared the debt with her rich friend. And then, too, with children she is wonderfully tender.

Fourth Nun (with a little shiver): But that cold gray eye like glass! I verily believe her thoughts are all ... for the last things.

Sister Assumcion gives a little snort. Silence. Sister Pilar comes out of the convent behind the group of nuns, and approaches them unobserved.

Fourth Nun (musing): And yet, that book, by a monk long dead, about the miracles of Our Lady ... it shows her wondrous lenient to sin, let but the sinners be loud enough in her praise ... there was the thief she saved from the gallows because he had said so many Aves.

Sister Pilar: But he was not in religion.

(They all give starts of surprise.)

Second Nun: Jesus! How you startled me!

Third Nun: I verily believe you carry a heliotrope and walk invisible.

Sister Assumcion (a note of nervousness perceptible through the insolence of her voice): And are those in religion to have, forsooth, a smaller share in the spiritual treasure of the Church than thieves?

Sister Pilar sits down without answering.

Second Nun (smiling): Well?

Sister Pilar: They say there was once a giant, so strong that he could have lifted the Sierra Morena and placed them on the Pyrenees, but one day he happened on a little stone no bigger than my nail, but so firmly was it embedded in the ground that all his mighty strength availed him nothing to make it budge an inch.

Sister Assumcion: And that little stone is the sin of a religious?

Sister Pilar (with a shrug): Give it whatever meaning tallies with your humour. (She opens a book and begins to read it.)

Sister Assumcion (yawning): I’m hungry. Shall I send Zuleica to beg some marzipan from the Cellaress, or shall I possess my soul and belly in patience until dinner-time?

First Nun (jocosely): For shame! Gluttony is one of the deadly sins, is it not, Sister Pilar?

Sister Pilar keeps her eyes fixed on her book without answering. Jaime Rodriguez enters by door to left. Flutter among nuns.

Jaime Rodriguez: Christ and His Mother be with you, my daughters. (Sits down and mops his brow.) ’Tis wondrous cool and pleasant in your court. (He gives a shy glance at Sister Pilar, but she continues to keep her eyes on her book. Turns to fourth nun.) Well, daughter, and what of the cope you promised me?

Second Nun (holding up her embroidery): See! It wants but three more roses and one swan.

Jaime Rodriguez (with another glance in the direction of Sister Pilar): And do you know of what the swan is the figure? In that, flying from man, it makes its dwelling in wild, solitary haunts, St. Gregory of Nazianus holds that it figures the anchorite, and truly....

Sister Pilar (suddenly looking up, and smiling a little): But what of its love of the lyre and all secular songs, by which it is wont to be lured to its destruction from its most secret glens? I have read that this same failing has led some learned doctors to look upon it as a figure of the soul of man, drawn hither and thither by the love of vain things.

Jaime Rodriguez (up to now he has spoken in a mincing, self-conscious voice, but from this point on his voice is shrill and excited): Yes, yes, but that can also be interpreted as the love of godly men for sermons and edification and grave seemly discourse on the beautitudes of eternal life, and the holy deeds of men and women long since departed....

Sister Assumcion: The love, in short, of such discourse as yours, father? (She tries in vain to catch Sister Pilar’s eye and wink at her.)

Jaime Rodriguez (pouting like a cross child, sotto voce): Honey is not for the mouth of the ass.

Sister Assumcion: Well, when you joined us, we were in the midst of just such a discourse. ’Twas touching the sin of a religious, which Sister Pilar was likening to a stone of small dimensions, but so heavy that a mighty giant could not move it.

Jaime Rodriguez (turning eagerly to Sister Pilar): Where did you read that exemplum, daughter? I have not come upon it.

Sister Pilar: Sister Assumcion has drawn her own meaning from a little foolish tale. She must surely be fresh from pondering the Fathers that she is so quick to find spiritual significations. Is that volume lying by you (pointing to “Amadis”) one of the works of the Fathers, sister?

Sister Assumcion (staring at her insolently): No, Sister, it is not.

The other nuns titter.

Jaime Rodriguez: Well, ’tis doubtless true that a little sin shows blacker on the soul of a religious than a great sin on a layman’s soul ... but when it comes to the weighing in the ghostly scales, a religious has very heavy things to throw into the balance—Aves and Paters, though made of nought but air, are heavy things. Then, there is the nourishment of Christ’s body every day, making our souls wax fat, and—and—(impatiently) oh, all the benefits of a religious weigh heavily. The religious, like a peasant, has a treasure hid ’neath his bed that will for ever keep the wolf from the door. (Looks round to see if his conceit is appreciated.) In Bestiaries, the wolf, you know, is a figure of the devil.

Enter from behind Trotaconventos, carrying a pedlar’s pack. Throughout the play she is dressed in scarlet.

Trotaconventos (in unctuous, mocking voice): Six hens to one cock! I verily believe that was the sight that made Adam weary in Eden. Holy hens and reverend cock, I bid you good morrow. (She catches Sister Assumcion’s eye and gives a little nod.)

The Nuns in chorus: Why, ’tis our good friend Trotaconventos!

First Nun: For shame! You have sorely neglected San Miguel these last days. What news in the town?

Third Nun: I hear the Ponces gave a tournament and bull-fight to celebrate a daughter’s wedding, and that the bridegroom was gored by the bull and the leeches despair of his recovery—is’t true?

Second Nun: What is the latest Moorish song?

First Nun: Have you been of late to the Alcazar? You promised to note for me if DoÑa Maria wore her gown cut square or in a peak?

Trotaconventos (covering her ears with her hands): Good ladies, you’ll have me deaf. And do you not think shame to ask about such worldly matters before your confessor, there ... and before Sister Pilar? (turning to Sister Pilar). Well, lady, and have the wings sprouted yet? But bear in mind the proverb that says, the ant grew wings to its hurt; and why? Because it took to flying and fell a prey to the birds.

The nuns exchange glances and giggle. Sister Pilar looks at her with cold disgust.

Sister Pilar: Truly, you are as well stocked with proverbs and fables as our sister Assumcion. You, doubtless, collect them at fairs and peasants’ weddings, but ... (she breaks off suddenly, bites her lip, colours, and takes up her book).

Trotaconventos: Ah, well, wisdom can walk in a homespun jerkin as well as in the purple of King Solomon, eh, Don priest? And as to Sister Assumcion, what if her speech be freckled with a few wholesome, sun-ripened proverbs? They will not show on her pretty face when the nuns of Seville meet the nuns of Toledo in the contest of beauty, eh, my pretty? (Sister Assumcion laughs and tosses her head.) But the reverend chaplain is looking sourly! It is rare for Trotaconventos to meet with sour looks from the cloth. Why, there is not a canon’s house in los Abades that does not sweetly stink of my perfumes: storax, benjamin, gum, amber, civet, musk, mosqueta. For do they not say that holiness and sweet odours are the same? It was Don Miguel de Caceres—that stout, well-liking canon, God rest his soul, who lived in the house the choir-master has now—and I used to keep his old shaven face as soft for him as a ripe fig, and I saw to it that he could drink his pig-skin a day without souring his breath; well, he used to call me ‘the panther’ of Seville; for it seems the panther is as many-hued as the peacock, and the other beasts follow it to their destruction because of the sweet odours it exudes. And there were words from Holy Writ he would quote about me—in odorcur or words to that effect. Nor were the other branches....

Jaime Rodriguez (who had been fidgeting with impatience at Trotaconventos’s verbosity, as usual shrilly and excitedly): Doubtless the words quoted by the late canon were, in odore unguentorum tuorum curremus—in the track of thy perfumes shall we run. They come in the Song of Songs, the holy redondilla wherewith Christ Jesus serenades Holy Church, and truly....

Trotaconventos (calmly ironical): Truly, Don Jaime, you are a learned clerk. But as I was saying, it is not only for my perfumes that they seek me in los Abades. Don Canon is wont to have a large paunch, and Trotaconventos was not always as stout as she is now ... there were doors through which I could glide, while Don Canon’s bulk, for all his puffing and squeezing, must stand outside in the street. So in would go Trotaconventos, as easily as though it were your convent, ladies, her wallet stuffed with redondillas and coplas, and all the other learned ballads wherein clerks are wont to rhyme their sighs and tears and winks and leers, and thrown in with these were toys of my own devising—tiring-pins of silver-gilt, barred belts, slashed shoes, kirtles laced with silk, lotions against freckles and warts and women’s colics....

The nuns, except Sister Pilar, who is apparently absorbed in her reading, are drinking in every word with evident amusement and delight, Jaime Rodriguez grows every moment more impatient and bored.

Jaime Rodriguez: Er—er—the Roman dame, Cleopatra, the leman of Mark Antony, was also learned in such matters; she wrote a book on freckles and their cure and....

Trotaconventos: I do not doubt it, Don Jaime. Well, in would go Trotaconventos, and round her would flock the pretty little uncoiffed maids, like the doves in the Cathedral garden when one has crumbs in one’s wallet. And I would feed them with marzipan and deck them out with my trinkets, and then they would sigh and say it was poor cheer going always with eyes cast on the ground and dressed as soberly as a nun (she winks at the Nuns) when they had chest upon chest packed as close as pears in a basket with scarlet clothes from Bruges and Malines, and gowns of Segovian cloth and Persian samite, and bandequins from Bagdad, all stiff with gold and pearls and broidered stories, rich as the shroud of St. Ferdinand or the banners of the King of Granada, lying there to fatten the moths till their parents should get them a husband. And I would say, ‘Well, when the dog put on velvet breeches he was as good as his master. There’s none to see but old Trotaconventos, and she won’t blab. I’d like to see how this becomes you, and this ... and this.’ And I would have them decked out as gay and fine as a fairy, and they strutting before the mirror and laughing and blushing and taking heart of grace. Then my hand would go up their petticoats, and they would scream, ‘Ai! ai! Trotaconventos, you are tickling me!’ and laugh like a child of seven. And I would say, ‘Ah, my sweeting, there is one could tickle you better than me.’ And so I would begin Don Canon’s suit. Ay, and I would keep him posted in her doings, telling him at what procession she would be at, or in what church she would hear ‘cock’s mass.’ Or, if it was to a pretty widow his fancy roved, it was I that could tell him which days she was due at the church-yard to pray at her husband’s grave ... aye, as the proverb says, when the broom sprouts the ass is born to eat it.

Sister Assumcion (with a malicious glance at Jaime Rodriguez): But another proverb says: Honey is not for the mouth of the ass.

Trotaconventos (with a wink): And yet another says: Honey lies hid in rocks; and it was not only to the houses of lords and merchants that I went on Don Canon’s business. How did I win my name of Trotaconventos? It was not given me by my gossips at the font. I was not taught in my catechism that on the seventh day God created man and woman, and on the eighth day He created monks and nuns ... were you so taught, Sister Pilar?

Jaime Rodriguez, with a petulant sigh, gets up and goes and examines the arabesques on one of the walls.

Sister Pilar (looking up from her book, her eye sparkling and her cheek flushing): As to that ... I have seen a painted Bible wherein the Serpent of Eden is depicted with a wicked old woman’s face.

Jaime Rodriguez turns round with a shrill cackle.

Trotaconventos (chuckling): A good, honest blow, Sister Pilar! But as the proverb says, the abbot dines off his singing, and of its own accord the pot does not fill itself with stew. Howbeit, Sister Pilar, who laughs last laughs on the right side of his mouth. Well, ladies, shall we to the parlour? A ship from Tunis has lately come in, and one from Alexandria, and one from Genoa, and they tell me I was born under Liber with the moon in the ascendant, and that draws me ever to the water’s edge, and sailors have merry kind hearts and bring me toys, and, it may be, there will be that among them that will take your fancy.

First Nun: We have been burning to know what was hid in your pack to-day.

Third and Second Nun: To the parlour! To the parlour!

All except Sister Pilar and Jaime Rodriguez walk towards the convent. Sister Pilar goes on reading. Jaime Rodriguez comes up to her and timidly sits down beside her. Silence.

Jaime Rodriguez (in a constrained voice): I am to read mass to the pilgrims before they start for Guadalupe.

Sister Pilar (absently): I should like to go on pilgrimage.

Jaime Rodriguez: Perhaps ... if ... why do you never go then?

Sister Pilar (smiling a little sadly): Because I want to keep my own dream of a pilgrimage—nothing but mountains and rivers and seas and visions and hymns to Our Lady.

Jaime Rodriguez: I fear there are other things as well: fleas and dust, and tumblers and singers, and unseemly talk.

Sister Pilar: Hence I’d liefer go on pilgrimage by the road of my own dreams. (Passionately) Oh, these other things, small and pullulating and fertile, and all of them the spawn of sin! One cannot be rid of them. Why, even in the Books of Hours, round the grave Latin psalms the monks must needs draw garlands and butterflies and hawks and hounds; and we nuns powder our handiwork—the copes and vestments for the mass—not with such meet signs as crosses and emmies, but with swans and true-love knots and birds and butterflies ... (she breaks off, half laughing). I would have things plain and grave.

Jaime Rodriguez (impatiently): Yes, yes, but you are forgetting that Nature is the mirror in which is reflected the thoughts of God; hence, to the discerning eye, there is nothing mean and trivial, but everything, everything, is a page in the great book of the Passion and the Redemption. For him who has learned to read that book, the Martyrs bleed in roses and in amethysts, the Confessors keep their council in violets, and in lilies the Virgins are spotless—not a spray of eglantine, not a little ant, but is a character in the book of Nature. Why, without first reading it, the holy fathers could not crack a little nut; it is the figure of Christ, said Adam of Saint-Victor—its green husk is His humanity, its shell the wood of the Cross, its kernel the heavenly nourishment of the Host. Nay, daughter, I tell you....

Sister Pilar: Yes, yes, but do you verily believe the nun with her needle, the clerk with his brush, wots anything of these hidden matters? Nay, it is nought but vanity. Oh! these multitudinous seeds of vanity that lie broadcast in every soul, in every mote of sunshine, in every acre of the earth! There is no soul built of a substance so closely knit but that it has crannies wherein these seeds find lodging; and, ere you can say a pater, lo! they are bourgeoning! ’Tis like some church that stands four-square to the winds and sun so long as folk flock there to pray; then comes a rumour that the Moors are near, and the folks leave their homes and fly; and then, some day, they may return, and they will find the stout walls of their church all starred with jessamine, intagliated with ivy, that eat and eat until it crumbles to the ground. So many little things ... everywhere! And our thoughts ... say it be the Passion of Our Lord we choose for contemplation; at first, all is well, the tears flow, ’tis almost as if we smelled the sweat and dust of the road to Calvary ... and then, after a little space, we stare around bewildered, and know that our minds have broken into scores of little bright thoughts, like the margins of the Hours, and then ...

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, daughter, but I tell you you should obtain the key to the Creation; read St. Ambrose’s HexÆmeron, and thus school your mind by figures for the naked types of Heaven; there every house will be a church, its hearth an altar on which, no longer hid under the species of bread and wine, Jesus Christ will be for ever enthroned. And its roof will be supported not by pillars carved into the semblance of the Patriarchs and Apostles, but by the Patriarchs ... oh, yes, and the housewife’s store of linen will all be corporals, and her plate ... you are smiling!

Sister Pilar: How happy you must have been playing with your toys when you were a child! I can see you with an old wine-keg for an altar, a Moor’s skull for a chalice, and a mule’s discarded shoe for a pyx, chanting meaningless words, and rating the other children if their wits wandered ... but ... you are angry?

Jaime Rodriguez (rising in high dudgeon): Aye, ever mocking! Methinks ... I cannot call to mind ever reading that holy women of old mocked their confessors.

He walks across the court to the door at the side. Sister Pilar sits on for some minutes in a reverie, then rises, and goes and tends the plants round the fountain, so that she is not visible to any one entering the court from the convent. Enter from the convent Trotaconventos and Sister Assumcion.

Trotaconventos: As to hell-fire, my dear, you’ll meet with many a procuress and bawd in Paradise, for we have a mighty advocate in St. Mary Magdalene, who was of our craft. And as to the holy life, why, when your hams begin to wither and your breasts to sag, then cast up your eyes and draw as long an upper lip as a prioress at a bishop’s visitation. A sinful youth and a holy old age—thus do we both enjoy the earth and win to Paradise hereafter. Well, my sweeting, all is in train—I’d eat some honey, it softens the voice; and repeat the in Temerate and the De Profundis, for old wives say they are wonderful lucky prayers in all such business, and ... well, I think that is all. Be down at the orchard wall at nine o’clock to-night, and trust the rest to what the Moors call the ‘great procuress’—Night.

Exit Trotaconventos. Sister Pilar appears from behind the fountain. She and Sister Assumcion stare at each other in silence for a few seconds, Sister Pilar coldly, Sister Assumcion defiantly.

SCENE II

Scene the same. Time: Afternoon of the same day. Sister Pilar is hearing Juanito’s and Pepita’s lessons.

Pepita: Says St. John the Evangelist:

In Jesus Christ I do believe,

In guise of bread we Him perceive,

The Father’s side he ne’er does leave Son Eternal.

Juanito: Says St. Philip:

Down into Hell he did descend

The gates of which....

Sister Pilar: No, no, Juanito. That does not come for a long time.

Pepita: I remember; let me say.

Says St. James:

The Holy Ghost did Him conceive——

Juanito: ’Tis my part she is saying—’tis my part.

Says St. James ... oh, I can’t remember!

May we go on to the Seven Deadly Sins? I like them much the best.

Beware of Lust—King David once....

Sister Pilar: Juanito, dear, you must not look upon this exercise as a game. It is the doctrine of Holy Mother Church. It is your pilgrim’s staff and not a light matter. Let us begin again.

Juanita: Oh, I am so weary! The sun’s so hot. My head seems as if to-day it could not hold Creeds and such matters. Prithee, Sister Pilar, will you not read to us?

Pepita: Yes! Yes! From the Chronicle of Saint Ferdinand.

Sister Pilar: Oh, children, you have been at your tasks scarce quarter of an hour.

Children: Prithee, dear Sister Pilar! We were both bled this morning.

Sister Pilar: I fear I am a fond and foolish master. Well, so be it. (She opens a large folio.) Let me see....

Pepita: ’Twas at the fall of Seville that you left off yesterday.

Juanito: Yes, and that old Moor had yielded up the keys.

Sister Pilar: This is the place. “Now one of the keys was of so pure a silver that it seemed to be white, and in places it was gilded, and it was of a very notable and exquisite workmanship. In length it was the third of a cubit. Its stem was hollow and delicately turned, and it ended in a ball inlaid with divers metals. Round its guards in curious characters was engraved: God will open, the King will enter. The circle of its ring contained an engraved plaque like to a medal, embossed with flowers and leaves. And in the centre of the hole was a little plaque threaded with a delicately twisted cord, and the ring was joined to the stem by a cube of gold on the four sides of which were embossed alternately lions and castles. And on the edge of its bulk, between delicately inlaid arabesques, there was written, in Hebrew words and Hebrew characters, the same motto as that on the guards, which is in Latin—‘Rex Regium aperiet: Rex universÆ terrÆ introibit’—the King of Kings will open, the King of all the earth will enter. Some say the key and the whole incident is a symbol of the Host being lain in the custodia.”

Juanito: Oooh! It must have been a rare fine key. When I’m a man, may I have such a key?

Sister Pilar: I sadly fear, Juanito, that ’tis only to saints that such keys are given. Think you, you’ll be a saint some day?

Juanito: Not I! They live on lentils and dried peas. I’ll be a tumbler at the fairs. Already I can stand on my head ... (catching Pepita’s eye) nearly.

Pepita: Pooh! Any babe could stand on their head if some one held their legs.

Juanito (crestfallen and anxious to change the subject): Could St. Ferdinand stand on his head?

Pepita (much shocked): For shame, Juanito! Sister Pilar has told us he was a great saint!

Juanito: How great a one?

Sister Pilar: A very great one.

Juanito: What did he do?

Sister Pilar: Well, he had a great devotion for Our Lady and the Eucharist. He founded many convents and monasteries....

Pepita: Did he found ours?

Sister Pilar: It was founded during his reign.

Pepita: How long ago did he live?

Sister Pilar: More than a hundred years ... when your great-great-grandfather was living.

Pepita: There must have been many a nun lived here since then!

Juanito: How many? A hundred?

Sister Pilar: More.

Juanito: A thousand?

Sister Pilar: Maybe.

Juanito: A million?

Sister Pilar: Nay, not quite a million.

Juanito: Think you, they’d like to be alive again?

Sister Pilar: Ah! no.

Juanito: Why?

Sister Pilar: Because either they are in Paradise or will go there soon.

Juanito: Do all nuns go to Paradise?

Sister Pilar: I ... er ... I hope so.

Juanito: Will you go?

Sister Pilar: I hope so.

Juanito: Will Sister Assumcion go?

Sister Pilar: I hope so.

Juanito is silent for a second or two, then he begins to laugh.

Juanito: All those nuns, and when they die new ones coming! Why, it’s like Don Juan Tenorio springing up again in our game!

Pepita (extremely shocked): Oh, Juanito!

Juanito: Well, and so it is! And old Domingo says that his ghost tries o’ nights to steal the live nuns, but the dead ones beat him back.

Pepita: Yes, and it’s Don Juan that makes the flowers and the corn grow, and that’s what the game is that Domingo taught us.

Juanito: Let me sing it!

Pepita: No, me!

Sister Pilar: Children! Children! This is all foolish and evil talk. It is God, as you know well, that makes the corn grow. You should not listen to old Domingo.

Juanito: Oh, but he tells us fine tales of Roland and Belermo and the Moorish king that rode on a zebra.... I like them better than the lives of the Saints. Come, Pepita, let’s go and play.

They pick up their balls and run off and begin tossing them against one of the walls of the court.

Sister Pilar (musing): They too ... they too ... pretty flowers and butterflies upon the margin of the hours that catch one’s eye and fancy.... Pretty brats of darkness ... and yet Juanito is only five and is floating still, a little Moses, on the waters of Baptism. Soft wax ... but where is the impress of the seal of the King of Kings? He is a pigmy sinner, and albeit the vanities pursued by him are tiny things—balls and sweetmeats and pagan stories—still are they vanities, and with his growth will they grow. Jesus! My nightmare vision! Sin, sin, sin everywhere! Babes turn hideous. Dead birds caught by the fowler and turned into his deadliest snares. The fiends of hell shrink to their stature and ape their innocence and serious eyes; and how many virgins that the love of no man could have lured, have, through longing for children, been caught in concupiscence? Oh, sin and works of darkness, I am so weary of you!

Beyond the wall a jovial male voice is heard singing:

DerriÈre chez mon pÈre

Il est un bois taillis,

Serai-je nonnette, oui ou non?

Serai-je nonnette, je crois que non!

Le rossignol y chante,

Et le jour et la nuit,

Il chante pour les filles

Qui n’ont pas d’ami.

Il ne chante pas pour moi

J’en ai un, Dieu merci,

Serai-je nonnette, oui ou non?

Serai-je nonnette, je crois que non!

Enter Dennys, disguised as a mendicant friar.

Dennys: Christ, and His Mother, and all the Saints be with you, daughter. Whew! Your porter’s a lusty-sinewed rogue, and he was loath to let me enter, saying that he and the maid he’s courting were locked up in a church by one of my order and not let out till he had paid toll of all that he had in his purse (throws back his head and laughs), and I asked him if the maid lost something too, but....

Sister Pilar (very coldly): What is your pleasure, brother?

Dennys: My pleasure? Need you ask that of a mendicant friar? Why, my pleasure is the grease of St. John of the golden beard, the good sweat of gold coins—that is my pleasure. “Nothing for myself, yet drop it into the sack,” as your proverb has it. And, in truth, ’tis by the sweat of our brow that we, too, live; oh, we are most learned and diligent advocates, and, though we may skin our clients’ purses, down to robbing them of their mule and stripping them of their cloak, yet we are tireless in their cause, appealing from court to court till we reach the Supreme Judge and move Him to set free our poor clients, moaning in the dungeons of Purgatory. There is no cause too feeble for my pleading; by my prayers a hundred stepmothers, fifty money-lenders, eighty monks, and twenty-five apostate nuns have won to Paradise; so, daughter if you will but ... (catches sight of Pepita and Juanito who have stolen up, and are listening to him open-mouthed) Godmorrow, lord and lady! I wonder ... has this poor friar any toy or sugar-plum to please little lords and ladies? (Pepita and Juanito exchange shy, excited looks, laugh and hang their heads.) Now, my hidalgo, tell me would you liefer have a couple of ripe figs or two hundred years off Purgatory? (He winks at Sister Pilar, who has been staring at him with a cold surprise.)

Pepita (laughing and blushing): I’d like to see the figs before I answer.

Dennys (with a loud laugh): Well answered, DoÑa Doubting Thomas (turning to Sister Pilar). You Spaniards pass at once for the most doubting and the most credulous of the nations. You believe every word of your priest and doubt every word of your neighbour. Why, I remember ... may I sit down, daughter?... I remember once at Avila....

Pepita: You have not yet shown us these two figs.

Dennys: No, nor I have! As your poor folk say, “One ‘take’ is worth a score of ‘I’ll gives.’” Give me your balls. (He makes cabalistic signs over them.) There now, they are figs, and brebas at that! What, you don’t believe me? (noticing their disappointed faces.) It must be at the next meeting, little lord and lady. Half a dozen for each of you, my word as a tr—— as a friar. But you must not let me keep you from your business ... I think you have business with a ball, over at that wall yonder?

Pepita and Juanito: Come and play with us.

Dennys: No, no, it would not suit my frock. Another day, maybe. Listen, get you to your game of ball, but watch for the Moor who may come swooping down on you like this (He catches them up in his arms, they laughing and struggling): fling them over his shoulders as it were a bag of chestnuts. Then hie for the ovens of Granada! (He trots them back to the wall, one perched on either shoulder.) Now, my beauties, you busy yourselves with your ball and expect the Moor. But mind! He’ll not come if you call out to him. (He returns to the bewildered Sister Pilar.) I think that will keep them quiet and occupied a little space. Well, I suppose your sisters are having their siesta and dreaming of ... I’ll sit here a little space if I may, your court is cool and pleasant.

(Pause.)

Dennys (looking at her quizzically): So all day long you sit and dream and sing the Hours.

Sister Pilar (coldly): And is that not the life of a religious in your country?

Dennys: And so my tongue has betrayed my birth? Well, it is the Judas of our members. But I am not ashamed of coming from beyond the Pyrenees. And as to the life of a religious in France—what with these roving knaves that call themselves “companions” and make war on every man, and every woman, too, and the ungracious Jacquerie that roast good knights in the sight of their lady wife and children, and sack nunneries and rape the nuns, why the Hours are apt to be sung to an un-gregorian tune. And then the followers of the Regent slaying the followers of the Provost of Paris in the streets....

Sister Pilar: Oh, the hate of kings and dukes and desperate wicked men! Were such as they but chained, there might be room for peace and contemplation.

Dennys: The hate of kings and dukes and desperate wicked men! But, daughter, the next best thing to love is hate. ’Tis the love and hate of dead kings and lovely dead Infantas has filled the garden-closes with lilies and roses, and set men dipping cloths in crimson dye, and broidering them in gold, and breaking spears in jousts and tourneys ... that love and hate that never dies, but is embalmed in songs and ballads, and....

Sister Pilar: Brother, you are pleading the cause of sin.

Dennys: It has no need of my pleading, lady. Why, I know most of the cots and castles between here and the good town of Paris. I have caught great, proud ladies at rere-supper in their closets, drinking and jesting and playing on the lute with clerks and valets, and one of them with his hand beneath her breast, while her lord snored an echo to the hunter’s horn that rang through the woods of his dreams; and in roadside inns I have met little, laughing nuns, who....

Sister Pilar (rising): You speak exceeding strangely for a friar, nor is it meet I should hear you out.

Dennys: Nay, daughter, pardon my wild tongue; the tongue plays ever ape to the ear, and if the ear is wont to hear more ribald jests than paters, why then the tongue betrays its company ... nay, daughter, before you go, resolve me this: what is sin? To my thinking ’tis the twin-sister of virtue, and none but their foster-mother knows one from t’other. Are horses and tourneys and battles sin? Your own St. James rides a great white charger and leads your chivalry against the Moors. (With a sly wink) I have met many an hidalgo who has seen him do it! And we are told there was once an angelic war in Heaven, and I ween the lists are ever set before God’s throne, and the twelve Champions, each with an azure scarf, break lances for a smile from Our Lady. And as to rich, strange cloths and jewels, the raiment of your painted wooden Seville virgins would make the Queen of France herself look like a beggar maid. And is love sin? The priests affirm that God is love. Tell me then, daughter, what is the birth-mark of the twin-sister sin that we may know and shun her?

Sister Pilar (in a very low voice): Death.

Dennys: Death? (half to himself). Yes, I have seen it at its work ... that flaunting, wanton page at Valladolid, taunting the old Jew doctor because ere long all his knowledge of herbs and precious stones would not keep him sweet from the worm, and ere the week was done the pretty page himself cold and blue and stiff, and all the ladies weeping. And the burgher’s young wife at Arras, a baby at each breast, and her good man, his merry blue eyes twinkling, crying, “Oh, my wife is a provident woman, Dennys, and has laid up two pairs of eyes and four hands and four strong legs and two warm hearts against her old age and mine” ... then how he laughed! And ere the babies had cut their first tooth it was violets and wind-flowers she was nourishing.... Ay, Death ... when I was a child I mind me, and still sometimes, as I grow drowsy in my bed, my fancies that have been hived all day begin to swarm—buzzing, stinging, here, there, everywhere ... then they take shape, and start marching soberly two and two, bishops and monks, and yellow-haired squires, and little pert clerks, and oh, so many lovely ladies—those ladies that we spoke of, who being dead have yet a thousand lives in the dreams of folk alive—Dame Venus, Dame Helena, the slave-girl Briseis, Queen Iseult, Queen Guinevere, the Infanta Polyzene; and, although they weep sorely and beat with their hands, a herald Moor shepherds them to the dance of the grisly King, who, having danced a round with each of them, hurls them down into a black pit ... down which I, too, shortly fall ... to come up at the other side, like figures on Flemish water-clocks, at the birds matins.

Sister Pilar (in an awed voice): Why ... ’tis strange ... but I, too, fall asleep thus!

Dennys (shaking his finger at her): For shame, daughter, for the avowal! It tells of rere-suppers of lentils and manjar-blanca in the dorter, or, at least, of faring too fatly in the frater ... what if I blab on you to the Archbishop? Well, this is a piteous grave discourse! I had meant to talk to you of Life, and lo! I have talked of Death.

Pepita and Juanito come running up.

Pepita: We waited and waited, but the Moor never came!

Dennys (gazing at them in bewilderment): The Moor? What Moor ... Don Death’s trumpeter? Why, to be sure! Beshrew me for a wool-gatherer! It was this way: as he was riding forth from the gate of Elvira he was stricken down with colic by Mahound, because in an olla made him by his Christian slave he had unwittingly eaten of the flesh of swine.

The children shriek with laughter.

Juanito: Oh, you are such a funny man! Isn’t he, Sister Pilar? But you must come and play with us now.

Dennys: Well, what is the sport to be?

Juanito: Bells of Sevilla ... ’tis about Don Juan Tenorio.

Pepita: But Sister Pilar will never dance, and it takes a big company.

Juanito: We’ll play it three. When we reach the word “grave” we all fall down flop. Come!

They take hands and dance round, singing:

Bells of Sevilla, Carmona, and all

Toll, toll, as we carry the pall

(Weep, doÑas, weep.)

For Don Juan the fairy

(Chant miserere.)

The lovely and brave

Is cold in his grave.

They fall down.

Juanito: But we have none to sing the last copla for us that we may spring up again. Dear Sister Pilar, couldn’t you once?

She smilingly shakes her head.

Dennys: Come, daughter, be merciful.

Her expression hardens and she again shakes her head. In the meantime, Sister Assumcion has come up unobserved, and suddenly in a clear, ringing voice, she begins to sing:

Into the earth, priest, lower the bier,

The glory of Seville is withered and sere

(Weep, doÑas, weep.)

But Don Juan Tenorio

(Carol the gloria.)

With a caper so brave

Leaps up from the grave.

They all jump up laughing. Dennys stares at Sister Assumcion with a bold and, at the same time, dazzled admiration. The sun seems suddenly to shine more brightly upon them and the children. Sister Pilar is in the shadow.

SCENE III

Nine o’clock in the evening of the same day. The convent’s orange orchard. From the chapel is wafted the voices of the nuns singing Compline. A horse whinnies from the other side of the orchard wall.

Don Manuel de Lara (who all through this scene is at the other side of the wall and hence invisible): Whist! Muza! Whist, my beauty! (sings):

Ave Maria gloriosa

Virgen Santa, preciosa,

CÓmo eres piadosa

TodavÍa!

Sister Assumcion enters as he sings and walks hurriedly towards the wall.

Sister Assumcion (sings):

Gracia plena, sin mancilla,

Abogada,

Por la tu merced, SeÑora,

Faz esta maravilla

SeÑalada.

Don Manuel de Lara (quickly and tonelessly, as if repeating a lesson): Oh, disembodied voice! Like the cuckoo’s, you tell of enamelled meads watered by fertile streams and of a myriad small hidden beauties that in woods and mountains the spring keeps sheltered from men’s eyes.

Sister Assumcion (laughing softly): Sir knight, howbeit I have never till this moment heard your voice, yet I can tell ’tis not an instrument tuned to these words.

Don Manuel de Lara: A pox on trovares and clerks, and the French Courts of Love.... I’ll trust to the union of the moon and my own hot blood to find me words!

Sister Assumcion (mockingly): The moon’s a cold dead mare, is your blood a lusty enough stallion to beget ought on her?

Don Manuel de Lara (with an impatient exclamation): I’ve not come to weave fantastic talk like serenading Moors. All I would say can be said in the Old Christians’ Castilian.

Sister Assumcion: Well, sir knight, speak to me then in Castilian.

(Pause.)

Don Manuel de Lara (slowly and deliberately): So you have come to the tryst.

Sister Assumcion: So it would seem.

(Pause.)

Don Manuel de Lara (as if having come to a sudden resolution): Listen, lady. I am no carpet knight, dubbed with a jester’s bladder at a rere-supper of infantas. I won my spurs when I was fourteen at the Battle of Salado. Since then I have been in sieges and skirmishes and night-alarms, enough to dint ten coats of mail. And because there is great merit in fighting the Moors, I have permitted myself to sin lustily. I have even lain with the daughters of Moors and Jews, for which I went on foot to Compostella and did sore penance, for it is a heavy sin, and the one that brought in days gone by the flood upon the earth. But never have I sinned with the wife or daughter or kinswoman of my over-lord, or with one of the brides of Christ. I am from Old Castille, and I cannot forget my immortal soul. But I verily believe that old witch Trotaconventos has laid a spell upon me; for she has so inflamed my blood with her talk of your eyes, your lashes, your small white teeth, your scarlet lips and gums, your breasts, your flanks, your ankles ... oh, I know well the tune to which old bawds trumpet their wares; and man is so fashioned as to be swayed by certain words that act on him like charms—such as “breasts,” “hips,” “lips”—and must as surely burn at the naming of them as a hound must prick his ears and bay at the sound of a distant horn, but it is but with a small, wavering flame, soon quenched, with a “no, no, gutter-crone, none of your scurvy, worm-eaten goods for me!” But when the old witch talked of you, ’twas with the honeyed tongue of Pandar himself, the same that stole from the good Knight, Troilus, all manliness and pride of arms. And she has strangely stirred my dreams ... they are ever of scaling towers and mining walls; but, although dreaming, I know well the towers are not of stone, nor the mines dug in earth ... lady ... I think I am sick ... I——

Sister Assumcion (frightened): What ails the man? ... but ... Trotaconventos ... I had not thought ... ’tis all so strange....

Don Manuel de Lara (solemnly): Why did you come to the postern to-night, Sister Assumcion?

Sister Assumcion (angrily): Why did I come? A pretty question! I came because of the exceeding importunities of Trotaconventos, who said you lay sick for love of me.

Don Manuel de Lara (low, sternly): You are the bride of Christ. Is your profession a light thing?

Sister Assumcion (shrilly): Profession? Much wish I had to be professed! I do not know who my mother was nor who my father. I was reared by the priest of a little village near the Moorish frontier. He was good-natured enough so long as the parishioners were regular with their capons and sucking-pigs laid on the altar for the souls of the dead, but all he cared for was sport with his greyhound and ferret, and they said he hadn’t enough Latin to say the Consecration aright, and that the souls of his parishioners were in dire peril through his tongue tripping and stumbling over the office of Baptism, so ’twas little respect for religion that I learned in his house. And so little did I dream of being professed a nun that though the fear of the Moors lay black over the village, and the other maids could not go to fill their pitchers at the well or take the goatherds their midday bread and garlic without their hearts trembling like a bird, yet as to me I never tired of hearing the tale of the Infanta Proserpine, who, as she was weaving garlands in her father’s garden, was stolen by the Moorish king, Pluton; and I would pray, yes, pray at the shrine of Our Lady on the hill to lull my guardian-angel asleep and sheath his sword, and on that very day to send a fine Moorish knight in a crimson marlota and armour glittering in the sun, clattering down the bridle-path to carry me off to Granada, where, if it had meant a life of ease and pleasure, I would gladly have bowed down before the gold and marble Mahound.

Don Manuel de Lara: How came you, then, to take the veil?

Sister Assumcion (bitterly): Through no choice of my own. When I was twelve, the priest said he had law business in Seville, and asked me if I’d like to go with him. If I’d like to go with him! It was my dream to see Seville, and I had made in my fancy a silly, simple picture—a town which was always a great fair, stall upon stall of bright, glittering merchandise, and laughter and merriment, and tumblers and dancers, threaded with a blue river upon which ships with silken sails and figureheads of heathen gods, laden with lords and ladies, and painted birds that talked, were ever sailing up and down, and all small and very brightly coloured, like the pictures in a merry lewd book of fables by an old Spanish trovar, Ovid, for which my priest cared more than for his breviary. And oh, the adventures that were to wait me there! Well, we set out, I riding behind him on his mule ... if I shut my eyes it all comes back as if it were but yesterday.... I jolted and sore and squeamish from my nearness to him, as his linen was as foul as were the corporals in his Church ... then the band of merchants and their varlets we travelled with for greater safety on the road.... It was bicker, bicker all the time between them and my priest ... each time we came to a bridge it was, “Nay, sir priest, we’ll not let you across for you and your cloth pay naught to their building and upkeep,” and then.... Oh, ’twas a tedious journey, and took the heart out of me. Well, we reached Seville towards dusk ... a close, frowning, dirty town, in truth, nought but a Morisco settlement such as we had at home—the houses all blank and grim like dead faces, and oh! the stink of dogs’ corpses! And not a soul to be seen for fear of the Guzmans and the Ponces.... And yet I’d catch the whiff of orange-flowers across the walls, and I heard a voice singing the ballad, Count Arnaldo, to the lute ... ’tis strange, these two things, whiffs of orange-flower at night and the Count Arnaldo ... it has ever been the same with me, they turn the years to come to music and perfume ... or, rather, ’tis as if the years had come and gone, and already I was old and dreaming them back again. Well, albeit like a pious little maid, I had said a Pater and Ave for the parents of St. Julian that he might send me a good lodging, ’twas to the house of Trotaconventos the priest took me that night, and it seemed to me indeed an evil house and she a witch, and I never closed my eyes all night. Next morning she brought me here, and after that night, what with its cool dorter and frater, and its patio and gardens, it seemed like the castle of Rocafrida—the fairy houses in ballads; and whether I would or not I became a novice ... a dowerless novice without clothes or furniture, and never a coin even to give the servants at Christmas ... and then ... what would you? Once a novice ’tis wellnigh impossible to ’scape the black veil (her tone once more bantering). And that’s the end of the story, and may the good things that come be for all the shire. Did the daughters of the Moors and Jews tell you such prosy tales?

(Pause.)

Don Manuel de Lara: You have not yet told me why you came to the postern to-night.

Sister Assumcion (in a voice where archness tries to conceal embarrassment): Why, you must be one of the monkish knights of Santiago! I feel like a penitent in the Confessional ... mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, aha! aha!

Don Manuel de Lara (very solemnly): I will know. Did that old witch in mandragora or henbane, or whatever be the hellish filters that hold the poison of love, pour me hurtling and burning through your veins as you were poured through mine?

Sister Assumcion: Jesus!... I ... she did indeed please my fancy with the picture that she drew of you ... but come, sir knight! You forget I have not yet seen your face, much less....

Don Manuel de Lara (slowly): So on a cold stomach, through caprice and a little accidia you were ready to forfeit eternal bliss and ... I will not mince my words ... make Our Lord Jesus Christ a cuckold?

Sister Assumcion: Well, of all the strange talk! I vow, Sir Knight, it is as if you blamed me for coming to the tryst. Have you forgotten how for weeks you did importune that old witch with prayers and vows and tears and groans that she should at least contrive I should hold speech with you to give you a little ease of your great torment? And what’s more, ’tis full six weeks since you began plaguing me by proxy; at least, I have not failed in coyness.

Don Manuel de Lara: True, lady, I ask your pardon. Why should I blame you for my dreams? (half to himself) a phantom fire laying waste a land of ghosts and shadows ... then a little wind wafting the smell of earthly things ... wet flowers and woods ... its wings dropping wholesome rain and lo! the fantastic flames with dying hisses vanish in the smoke that kindled them.... Lips? Lashes? Haunches? I spoke foolishly; they are not enough. How can I tell my dreams? (his voice grows wild). Lips straining towards lips against the pulling back of all the hosts of Heaven ... a sin so grave as to be own sister to virtue ... oh! sweetness coming out of horror ... once my horse’s hoofs crushed a seven years’ old Moorish maid ... ooh!

During the last words, Sister Pilar has crept up unperceived.

Sister Pilar: Sister, I missed you at Compline.

Sister Assumcion: Indeed! And in the interval have you been made prioress or sub-prioress?

Sister Pilar: Sister Assumcion, this is not the time for idle taunts. I cannot say I love you, and in this I know I err, for no religious house can flourish except Sisters Charity, Meekness, and Peace are professed among its nuns. But I came for the honour of this house.... God knows its scutcheon is blotted enough ... have you forgotten Sister Isabel?... believe me I must speak; it would go ill with me were I to see a sister take horse for hell and not catch hold of the bridle, nay, fling my body underneath the hoofs, if that could stop the progress.

Sister Assumcion: And what is all this tedious prose? Because, forsooth, feeling faint at Compline, I crept out to take the evening air.

Sister Pilar: You lie, sister. Think you I am deaf? As I drew near a man’s voice reached me from the other side of the wall. (Raising her voice.) Most impious of all would-be adulterers, know that your banns will be forbidden by the myriad voices of the Church Militant, the Church Triumphant, and the Church in Torment. For she (and all nuns do so), who through the watches of the night prays for the dead, raises up a ghostly bodyguard to fight for her virginity. Beware of the dead! They hedge this sister round.

Sister Assumcion (shrilly): You canting, white-lipped, sneering witch! You whose breasts are no bigger than a maid of twelve! You ... you ... this talk comes ill from you ... do you think me blind? Oh, Sister Vanity, what of your veil drawn down so modestly to your eyes in frater or in chapter, but when there are lay visitors in the parlour, or even Don Jaime gossiping in the patio, have I not seen that same veil creep up and up, till it reveals the broad, white brow? Oh, and the smile hoarded like a miser’s gold that when at last it is disclosed all may the more marvel at the treasure of small, white teeth! Oh, swan who loves solitude but who, of all birds, is the most swayed by the music of ... mendicant friars!

Sister Pilar: Silence!

Sister Assumcion: Aha! That shaft went home! What of the Deadly Sins grimacing behind the masks of the virtues? Why do you hate me so? Well, I will tell you. ’Tis the work of our old friend of the Catechism—Envy, the jaundiced, sour-breathed Don. Remember, Sister Pilar: Thou shalt not envy thy sister’s flanks, nor her merry tongue, nor her red lips, nor any of her body’s members. Over my shoulder to-day, I saw the look with which you followed the friar and me.

Sister Pilar (in a voice choked with passion): Silence! you peasant’s bastard! You who have crept into a house of high born ladies and made it stink with as rank a smell as though a goat had laid down among Don Pedro’s Arab mares. Poor mummer! From a little, red-cheeked, round-eyed peasant girl, I have seen you moulding yourself to the pattern of our high-born visitors—from one the shrill laugh, from another the eyes blackened with kohl, from a third the speech flowery from Amadis and other profane books—but all the civet and musk your fancy pours on your image of yourself cannot drown the peasant’s garlic. You flatter yourself, Sister Assumcion; I, a Guzman, whose mother was a Perez, and grandame a Padilla, how could I for a second envy you?

Sister Assumcion (laughing): But peasant’s blood can show red in the lips and gums, and a bastard’s breasts can be as full and firm, her limbs as long and slender as those of a Guzman or a Padilla. Your rage betrays you, Sister Pilar. I bid you good-night.

Exit. (Pause.)

Sister Pilar: My God! Envy! It has a sour smell. And rage and pride—two other deadly sins whose smell is ranker than that of any peasant. (Shrilly) Sloth! Avarice! Gluttony! Lust! Why do you linger? Your brothers wait for you to begin the feast.

Sinks on her knees.

Oh, heavenly advocate! Sweet Virgin of compassion, by your seven joys and seven sorrows I beseech you to intercede for me. I have sinned, I have sinned, my soul has become loathsome to me. Oh, Blessed Virgin, a boon, a boon! That either by day or in the watches of the night, though it be but for a second of time I may behold the woof of things without the warp of sin ... a still, quiet, awful world, and all the winds asleep.

From beyond the wall comes a small whinny, then the jingle of spurs and the sound of departing hoofs. Sister Pilar starts violently.

ACT II

SCENE I

A room in Trotaconventos’s house. The walls are hung with bunches of dried herbs and stags’ antlers. On a table stands a big alembic surrounded by snakes and lizards preserved in bottles, and porcupines’ quills. Trotaconventos is darning a gorget and talking to Don Salomon. The beginning of this scene is happening simultaneously with the last part of the previous one.

Trotaconventos: A fig for a father’s love! To seek for it is, as the proverb has it, to seek pears on an elm tree.

Don Salomon: Pardon me, oh pearl of wisdom. Our Law has shown that a mother’s love is as dross to a father’s. In the book called Genesis we are told that when there was the flood of water in the time of Noah, the fathers fled with their sons to the mountains, and bore them on their heads that the waters might not reach them, while the mothers took thought only of their own safety, and climbed up on the shoulders of their sons. And at the siege of Jerusalem....

Trotaconventos: Oh, a pox on you and your devil’s lore! It is proverbs and songs that catch truth on the wing, and they tell ever of a mother’s love. Would you have me believe in your love to Pepita and Juanito when I saw new hopes and schemes spring up as quickly in your heart as the flowers on Isabel’s grave.... I never yet have met a man who could mourn the dead; for them ’tis but the drawing of a rotten molar, a moment’s sharp pain, and then albeit their gums may ache a day, they will already be rejoicing in the ease and freedom won by its removal.

Don Salomon: There was once a young caliph, and though he had many and great possessions, the only one he valued a fig was one of his young wives. She died, and night descended on the soul of the caliph. One evening her spirit came to him, as firm and tangible as had been her body, and after much sweet and refreshing discourse between them, beneath which his grief melted like dew, she told him that he might at will evoke her presence, but that each time he did so he would forfeit a year of life.... He invoked her the next night, and the next, and the next ... but he was close on eighty when he died.

Trotaconventos (triumphantly): Just so! The caliph was a man; you do but confirm my words.

Don Salomon: Well, let us consider, then, your love to your children. First, there was Isabel, and next, that exceeding handsome damsel, Sister Assumcion ... nay, nay, it is vain protesting; the whole town knows she was a cunning brat that all your forty summers and draughts and chirurgy were powerless to keep out of the world ... well, these two maids, both lusty and vegetal, and made for the bearing of fine children, what must you do but have them both professed in one of these nunneries ... nunneries! Your ballads tell of a Moorish king who was wont to exact a yearly tribute of sixty virgins from your race; what of your God who exacts more like a thousand?

Trotaconventos: Out on you, you foul-mouthed blaspheming Jew! I’d have you bear in mind that you are in the house of an Old Christian.[2]

Don Salomon: Ay, an Old Christian who recked so little of her law and faith that, just because they paid a little more, has suckled the brats of the Moriscos![3]

Trotaconventos: Pooh! An old dog does not bark at a tree-stump; you’ll not scare me with those old, spiteful whispers of los Abades. Come, drag me before the alcalde and his court, and I’ll disprove your words with this old withered breast ... besides, as says the proverb, He whose father is a judge goes safe to trial—Trotaconventos walks safe beneath the cloak of DoÑa Maria de Padilla, for Queen Blanche dies a virgin-wife, if there be any virtue in my brews.

Don Salomon: You took it for a threat? Come, come, you are growing suspicious with advancing years. But we were talking of your love to your daughters. Resolve me this: why did you make them nuns?

Trotaconventos: Why did I make them nuns? Because of all professions, it is the most pleasing to God and His Saints.

Don Salomon: So that was your reason? Well, I read your action somewhat differently. Of all the diverse flames that burn and corrode the heart of man, there is none so fierce as the flames of a mother’s jealousy of her growing daughters. You have known that flame—the years that withered your charms were ripening theirs, and, that you might not endure the bitterness of seeing them wooed and kissed and bedded, you gave them—to your God. Wait! I have not yet said my say. Rumours have reached me of the flame you have kindled in the breast of an exceeding rich and noble knight for Sister Assumcion, and that, albeit, you knew a score of other maids would have been as good fuel, and brought as good a price; just as some eight years since, you chose Isabel to kindle the fire in me. Why? Of all your so-called learned doctors—the most of them but peasants, trembling, as they roast the chestnuts on winter nights, at their grandame’s tales—there is one I do revere, Thomas Aquinas, for he is deeply read in the divine Aristotle, and, to boot, he knows the human heart. Well, your Thomas Aquinas tells of a sin which he calls ‘morose delectation,’ which is the sour pleasure—a dried olive to palates too jaded now for sweet figs—that monks and nuns and women past their prime find in the viewing of, or the hearing of, or the thinking of the bodily joys of the young and lusty. And ‘morose delectation’ is never so bitter-sweet as when aroused in a mother by the amours of her daughter, and this it was that got in your bosom the upper hand of jealousy and made you choose your own daughters to inflame the love of this knight and me.

Trotaconventos: Well ... by Our Lady ... you ... (bursts out laughing). Why, Don Salomon, in spite of all your rabbis and rubbish, you have more good common sense than I had given you credit for! (laughs again).

Don Salomon, in spite of himself, gives a little complacent smile.

Don Salomon: Laughter is the best physic; I am glad to have been able to administer it. But to return to the real purport of my visit. I tell you, you are making the convent of San Miguel to stink both far and wide, and I look upon it as no meet nursery for Moses and Rebecca.

Trotaconventos: Moses and Rebecca! Truly most pretty apt names for Christian children! But think you not that Judas and Jezebel would ring yet sweeter on the ear? Then, without doubt, their Christian playmates would pelt them through the streets with dung and dead mice—Moses and Rebecca, forsooth! In the city of Seville they will ever be Pepita and Juanito.

Don Salomon: Pepita and Juanito ... foolish, tripping names to suit the lewd comic imps of hell in one of your miracle plays. The Talmud teaches there is great virtue in names, and when they come with me to Granada they will be Moses and Rebecca.

Trotaconventos: Go with you to Granada? What wild tale is this?

Don Salomon: ’Tis no wild tale. You rated me for indifference to my children, but I am not so indifferent as to wish to see them reared in ignorance and superstition by a flock of empty-headed, vicious nuns who have become like Aholah and Aholibah, they who committed whoredoms in Egypt.

Trotaconventos: Once more, an old dog does not bark at a tree-stump. You’ll never go to Granada.

Don Salomon: And why not, star-reader?

Trotaconventos: Because you are of the race of Judas that sold our Lord for a few sueldos. There are many leeches more learned than you in Granada, but none in Castille, therefore....

Don Salomon (indignantly): Whence this knowledge of the leeches of Granada? Name me one more learned than I.

Trotaconventos (ignoring the interruption): Therefore, in that in Castille you earn three times what you would do in Granada, you will continue following the court from Valladolid to Toledo, from Toledo to Seville, until the day when you are unable to save Don Pedro’s favourite slave, and he rifles your treasure and has you bound with chains and cast into a dungeon to rot slowly into hell.

Don Salomon (quite unmoved): Howbeit, you will see that to one of my race his children are dearer than his coffers. Unless this convent gets in better odour, Moses and Rebecca will soon be playing in Granada round the Elvira gate, and sailing their boats upon the Darro ... have you that balsam for me?

Trotaconventos: Ay, and have you two maravedis for it?

Don Salomon (taking out two coins from his purse): Are you, indeed, an Old Christian? Had you no grandam, who, like your own daughter, was not averse to a circumcised lover? Methinks you love gold as much as any Jew.

Trotaconventos (drops the coins on the table and listens to their ring): Yes, they sing in tune; a good Catholic doremi, I’d not be surprised to hear coins from your purse whine ‘alleluia’ falsely through their nose—the thin noise of alloy and a false mint. (Goes and rummages in a coffer, and with her back turned to him, says nonchalantly): Neither your ointment nor the Goa stones powdered in milk have reduced the swelling.

Don Salomon does not answer, and Trotaconventos looks sharply over her shoulder.

Trotaconventos: Well?

He looks at her in silence. She walks over to him.

Trotaconventos: Here is your balsam. As touching sickness, I have ever hearkened to you; you may speak.

Don Salomon: The ointment ... I hoped it might give you some relief of your pain; but as to the swelling....

Trotaconventos: It will not diminish?

Don Salomon: No.

Trotaconventos: You are certain, Don Salomon?

Don Salomon: Yes.

Trotaconventos: But ... surely ... the Table of Spain, Don Pedro’s carbuncle ... I verily believe DoÑa Maria could get me it for a night ... ’tis the most potent stone in the world.

Don Salomon: Dame, you have ever liked plain speaking. Neither in the belly of the stag, nor in the womb of the earth, nor in God’s throne, is there a precious stone that can decrease that swelling.

Trotaconventos: Can one live long with it?

Don Salomon: No.

Trotaconventos: How long?

Don Salomon: I cannot say to a day.

Trotaconventos sinks wearily down into a chair. Don Salomon gazes at her in silence for a time, then comes up and lays his hand on her shoulder.

Don Salomon (gravely): Old friend, from my heart I envy you. A wise man who had travelled over all the earth came to the court of a certain caliph, and the caliph asked him whom of all the men he had met on his wanderings he envied most; and the wise man answered: ‘Oh, Caliph, ’twas an old blind pauper whose wife and children were all dead.’ And when the caliph asked him why he envied one in such sorry plight, he answered, ‘because the only evil thing is fear, and he had nought to fear.’ You, too, have nothing to fear, except you fear the greatest gift of God—sleep.

Exit quietly.

Trotaconventos (wildly): Nothing to fear! Oh, my poor black soul ... hell-fire ... the devil hiding like a bug in my shroud ... oh, Blessed Virgin, save me from hell-fire!

The ghost of Don Juan Tenorio appears.

Don Juan Tenorio: There is no hell.

Trotaconventos: Who are you? Speak!

Don Juan Tenorio: I am the broad path that leads to salvation; I am the bread made of wheat; I am the burgeoning of buds and the fall of the leaf; I am the little white wine of Toro and the red wine of Madrigal; I am the bronze on the cheek of the labourer and his dreamless, midday sleep beneath the chestnut tree; I am the mirth at wedding-wakes; I am the dance of the Hours whose rhythm lulls kings and beggars, nuns, and goatherds on the hills, giving them peace, and freeing them from dreams; I am innocence; I am immortality; I am Don Juan Tenorio.

Trotaconventos: Don Juan Tenorio? Then you come from hell.

Don Juan Tenorio: I have spoken: there is no hell. There is no hell and there is no heaven; there is nought but the green earth. But men are arrogant and full of shame, and they hide truth in dreams.

Trotaconventos: Ay, but what of the black sins that weigh down my soul?

Don Juan Tenorio: Dreams are the only sin.

Trotaconventos: What, then, of death?

Don Juan Tenorio: Every death is cancelled by a birth; hence there is no death.

Trotaconventos: But I must surely die, and that ere long.

Don Juan Tenorio: But if others live? Prisoners! Prisoners! Locked up inside yourselves; like children born in a dark tower, as their parents were before them. And round and round they run, and beat their little hands against the wall, or stare at the old faded arras upon which fingers, dead a hundred years ago, have pictured quaint shapes that hint at flowers and birds and ships. And all the time the creaking door is on the jar, the gaolers long since dead.

The ghost of Sister Isabel appears.

Sister Isabel: Mother!

Trotaconventos (in horror): Isabel!

Sister Isabel: I come from Purgatory.

Don Juan Tenorio: Still a prisoner, bound by the dreams of the living.

Sister Isabel: As they are by the dead.

Trotaconventos: Why do you visit me, daughter?

Sister Isabel: To bid you save my little son from circumcision, my daughter from concubinage to the infidels.

Trotaconventos: How?

Sister Isabel: By preserving the virginity of my sisters in religion.

Don Juan Tenorio: Virginity! What of Christ’s fig-tree?

Sister Isabel: Demon, what do you know of Christ?

Don Juan Tenorio: Once we were one, but....

Sister Isabel: Lying spirit!

Don Juan Tenorio: That part of me that was he, was sucked bloodless by the insatiable dreams of man.

Sister Isabel: Mother, hearken not....

Don Juan Tenorio: Hearken not....

Sister Isabel: To this lying spirit.

Don Juan Tenorio: To this spirit drugged with dreams.

Sister Isabel: Else you will forfeit....

Don Juan Tenorio: Else you will forfeit....

Sister Isabel: Your immortal soul.

Don Juan Tenorio: Your immortal body.

Sister Isabel: All is vanity,

Don Juan Tenorio: All is vanity.

Sister Isabel: Save only the death,

Don Juan Tenorio: Save only the death,

Sister Isabel: And the resurrection,

Don Juan Tenorio: And the resurrection,

Sister Isabel: Of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Don Juan Tenorio: Of crops and trees and flowers and the race of man.

Sister Isabel: Remember that they fight to lose who fight the dead.

Don Juan Tenorio: Remember that they fight to lose who fight the Spirit of Life.

A violent knocking at the door. The ghosts of Don Juan Tenorio and Sister Isabel vanish. Trotaconventos sits up and rubs her eyes.

Trotaconventos: I have been dreaming ... life ... death ... my head turns. And what is this knocking?

Voice outside: Old stinking bird-lime! Heart-hammer! Magpie! Bumble-bee! Street trailer! Cuirass of rotten wood! Curry-comb! Corpus dragon! I bid you open, d’ye hear?

Trotaconventos: Why, I do believe ’tis that ardent lover, Don Manuel de Lara. Can the baggage have shied from the tryst?

Voice from outside: Gutter crone! Gutter crone! The fiends of hell gnaw your marrow! I want in!

Trotaconventos: Anon, good knight, anon! Well ... shall I throw cold water on his hopes and save my soul? Nay, Isabel, ’tis too late; one cannot make shepherds’ pipes out of this old barley straw ... and yet ... visions of sleep! Nay, through my living daughter will I taste again the old joys and snap my fingers at ... ghosts.

Opens the door. Don Manuel de Lara bursts into the room.

Don Manuel de Lara: Old hag, what have you done to me? You have been riding among the signs of the Zodiac ... I know ... and tampering with the Scales, putting sweetness in each, then throwing in the moon to turn the balance. Oh, you have given me philtres ... I know, I know ... some varlet bribed with a scarlet cloak, then strange liquid dreams curdling the rough juice of the Spanish grape ... and you all the while jeering and cackling at me! (seizes her roughly by the shoulders.) How dare you meddle with my dreams? You play with loaded dice.

Trotaconventos (soothingly): Wo! ass! Let me rub thee down, ass of my wife’s brother! You must have got an ague; the water of the Guadalquivir and Seville figs play strange tricks with Castilian stomachs in May. A little prayer to St. Bartholomew ... or better still, a very soothing draught I learnt to brew long since from a Jew doctor. Why, sir knight, what is this talk of love philtres? The only receipt I know for such is a gill of neat ankle or merry eye to three gills of hot young blood. And have you no thanks for your old witch? I cannot, let evil tongues wag as they will, drum the moon from the heavens, but trust old Trotaconventos to draw a nun from her cloister!

Don Manuel de Lara (who has been standing as if stunned): Aye, there’s the rub ... I’d have the moon dragged from the heavens (laughs wildly, then turns upon her violently). Oh, I’ll shake your black soul out of its prison of rotted bones. I am encompassed all around with your spells.

Trotaconventos: Don Manuel, you are sick. Lie down on this couch and take a cool draught of reason, for it, at least, is a medicinal stream. You have engendered your own dreams, there have been no philtres or spells. The abbot dines off his singing, and a procuress must suit all tastes, and if a silly serving-wench comes to me a-sighing and a-sobbing for some pert groom with a heron’s feather in his cap, or trembling lest Pedro in her distant village is giving his garlic-scented kisses to another maid, why, then I know nothing will salve her red eyes but sunflower seeds culled when Venus is in the house of the Ram, or a mumbling backwards of the psalms, on a waxen heart to melt over the fire. But these are but foolish toys for the vulgar, and the devil does not reveal his secrets to an Old Christian who goes to mass every Sunday and on feast-days too. You are not bewitched, Don Manuel, except it be by a pair of gray eyes smiling beneath a nun’s veil. Was she coy, perchance? Why, coyness in a maid....

Don Manuel de Lara (laughing bitterly): Coy? (impatiently.) I came here all hot with projects and decision, but now it is all flowing out of me like wine from a leaking pig-skin, and I seem bereft of will and desire, as sometimes on the field of battle when I fight in a dream, regardless if the issue be life or death. (Shaking himself.) The fault lies not with you, good dame; what you set out to do you have done, the which I shall bear in mind. As to spells and philtres, they say I was born under Saturn with the moon in the ascendant, and, whether it be true or no, some evil star distills dark, poisonous vapours round the nettles and rank roots that grow in the dark places of my soul, the which some chance word will draw from their hiding-place and ... in plain words, your nun is all your words painted her, but falls far short of the lineaments lent her by my fancy; for which it is not you but that same unbridled fancy, that is to blame. In that you compassed the meeting, you shall have rich cloths and a well-filled purse, but....

Trotaconventos (her indignation boiling over): Jesus! Here is a dainty Don! Comes far short of the linen lent her by your fancy! Was then her linen foul? Or rather, are you like Alfonso the Wise, and had you had the making of her would you have fashioned her better than God? I know your breed; as the proverb says, it is but a fool that wants a bread not made with wheat. In truth, the girl is well-formed, sprightly and hot-blooded. I know no damsel can so well....

Don Manuel de Lara: I have told you dame, you shall be well paid for your pains. But ... but ... there is another matter with regard to which I would fain....

Trotaconventos: And so you deem old Trotaconventos cares for naught but cloths and purses! And what of the pride in my craft? Upon my soul! My daintiest morsel sniffed at all round, and then Don Cat, with a hump of his back, his tail arched, and his lips drawn back in disdain....

Don Manuel de Lara: Come, dame, I am pressed for time. I ask your pardon if I have been over nice, and you have no need to take umbrage for your craft. I ... would ... would ask your help ... (sinks into a chair and covers his face with his hands) ... my God, I cannot. The words choke me.

There is a knock at the door.

Voice from outside: Hola! Hecate! Goddess of the cross-roads! Open in your graciousness.

Trotaconventos: ’Tis a stranger’s voice. (Aside) This time ’tis a case of better the devil one does not know.

Opens the door. Enter Dennys.

Dennys: Hail! Medea of Castille! Your fame has drawn me all the way from France. Why, ’twill soon rival the fame of your St. James, and from every corner of Christendom love-sick wights and ladies will come to you on pilgrimage.

Trotaconventos (laughing and eyeing him with evident favour): A pox on your flowery tongue! I know you French of old ... hot tongues and cold, hard hearts. Oh, you saucy knave; you! But see, your cloak is wet with dew. Come, I will shake it for you. (Draws off his cloak and at the same time slips her hand down his neck and tickles him).

Dennys: A truce! A truce! Thus you could unman me to yield you all my gold and tell you all my secrets. (Wriggles out of the cloak, leaving it in her hands.) Do you know the ballad of the Roman knight, Joseph, and DoÑa Potiphar?

Trotaconventos: Ay, that I do; and a poor puling ballad it is too! But you are no Sir Joseph, my pretty lad ... while others that I know ... (glances resentfully at Don Manuel de Lara, who is still sitting with his head buried in his hands. Dennys, following her glance, catches sight of him.)

Dennys: Some poor, love-sick wight? Why, then, are we guild brothers, and of that guild you are the virgin, fairer and more potent than she of the kings or of the waters; as with fists and cudgels we will maintain against all other guilds at Holy Week. Oh! I have heard of your miracles. That pious young widow with a virtue as unyielding as her body was soft, how....

Trotaconventos: Out on you, you saucy Frenchman! It would take a French tongue to call Trotaconventos a virgin. Why, before you were born ... come, I’ll tell you a secret. (She whispers something in his ear. He bursts out laughing.)

Dennys: Holy Mother of God! You should have given suck to Don Ovid. Why, that beats all the French fabliaux. Well, now as to my business. You must know I had a wager that, disguised as a mendicant friar, I would visit undiscovered twenty of the convents of Seville....

Trotaconventos (chuckling): A bold and merry wager!

Dennys: Ay, but that is but the prelude. In one of these convents (Don Manuel drops his hands from his face and sits up straight in his chair) I fell into an ambush laid by Don Cupid himself.

Trotaconventos (bitterly): To be sure! And so you come to old Trotaconventos. To be a procuress is to be the cow at the wedding, for ever sacrificed to the junketings of others. ’Tis other folks’ burdens killed the ass. Well, the time is short, the time is short, if you want Trotaconventos’s aid.

Dennys: Why, despite her habit, ’twas the fairest maid I have seen this side the Pyrenees, and I swear ’tis a sin she should live a nun. I fell to talking and laughing with her; but though she is a ripe plum, I warrant, ’tis for another hand to shake the branch. Now you, mother, I know, go in and out of every convent in Seville.... So will you be my most cunning and subtle ambassador?

Trotaconventos: Ay, but ambassadors are given services of gold, and sumpter-mules laden with crimson cloths, and retinues of servants, and apes and tumblers and dancers, and purses of gold. How will you equip your ambassador?

Dennys: A trovar’s fortune is his tongue and lips; so with my lips I pay. (He gives her three smacking kisses.)

Trotaconventos: Oh, you French jackanapes! Oh, you saucy ballad-monger! So you hold your kisses weigh like maravedis, do you? Well, well, I have ever said that the lips of a fine lad hold the sweetest wine in Spain. Now you must acquaint me more fully with your business, if you would have me speed it.

Dennys: Why! You know it all. I love a nun of the Convent of San Miguel, and....

Don Manuel de Lara springs from his bench and seizes him by the shoulders.

Don Manuel de Lara: You scurvy, whoreson, lily-livered, shameless son of France! France! The teeming dam of whores and ballad-mongers, whose king flies from his foes shaking a banner broidered with the lilies of a frail woman’s garden-close. You are in Castille, where lions guard our virgins in strong towers, and e’er you tamper with the virtue of a professed virgin of Spain, I will hew you into little pieces to feed my hounds. (He shakes him violently.)

Trotaconventos (pulling him back by his cloak): Let go, you solemn, long-jowled, finicky Judas! You fox in priest’s habit on the silver centre-piece of a king’s table! Don Cat turned monk that he might the better catch the monastery mice! Foul Templar escaped from Sodom and Gomorrah! Who are you to take up the glove for Seville nuns?

Don Manuel, paying no heed to Trotaconventos, holds Dennys with one hand, and with the other draws his dagger and places its point on his throat.

Don Manuel de Lara: Now, blackbird of St. BÉnoit, you’ll tell me the name of the nun you would seduce. D’ye hear? The name of the nun you would seduce!

Dennys (gasping): Sister Assumcion.

Trotaconventos: Ah!

Don Manuel lets go of Dennys, who, pale and gasping, is supported to the couch by Trotaconventos, she mingling the while words of condolence with Dennys and imprecations against the Don.

Don Manuel de Lara (to himself): Strange! Passing strange! That Moorish knight who gave me the head wound at Gibraltar ... then years later both serenading ’neath the same balcony, in Granada ... and then again, last year, of a sudden coming on his carved, olive face staring at the moon from a ditch in Albarrota. And I convinced, till then, that our lives were being twisted in one rope to some end.... Chance meetings, chance partings, chance meetings again. And this trovar, coming to-night, on business ... why am I so beset by dreams?

Dennys: Thanks, mother, the fiery don shook all the humours to my head (gets up). Well, knight, more kicks than ha’pence—that’s the lot of a trovar in Spain. I know well, necessity makes one embrace poverty and obedience, like the Franciscans, but I never learnt till now that a trovar must take the third vow of chastity.

Trotaconventos: Pooh! A rare champion of chastity and the vows of nuns you see before you! Why, my sweet lad, this same Don Manuel de Lara has been importuning me with prayers and tears and strange fantastical ravings, that I should devise a meeting between him ... and whom, think you? Why, this same Sister Assumcion.

Dennys: Sister Assumcion?

Trotaconventos: Ay, Sister Assumcion. But, as I tell him, he is one of these fools that seek a bread not made of wheat. He’ll not to bed unless I rifle hell for him and bring him Queen Helena. He comes to me to-night with a “comely, yes, but comeliness, what of comeliness?” and “a tempting enough for Pedro and Juan and the rest of the workaday world, but as to me!” And she the prettiest nun that ever took the veil, and certain to bear off the prize for Seville in the contest of beauty with the nuns of Toledo ... but not good enough for him, oh no!

Don Manuel de Lara: Of my thirty years, I have spent sixteen in fighting the Moors, and if I choose to squander some of the spiritual treasures I have thus acquired by my sword in ... (he brings the words out with difficulty) dallying with nuns, who knows, maybe I can afford it. But think you I’ll allow a sinewless French jongleur to rifle the spiritual treasury of Spain? For Spain is the poorer by every nun that falls. (Impatiently) Pooh! If two whistling false blackbirds choose to mate, what care I or Spain? Dame, settle this fellow’s business with him, then ... I would claim a hearing for my own.

Sits down on the bench and once more buries his face in his hands. Dennys taps his forehead meaningly and winks at Trotaconventos.

Dennys: Well, mother, will you be my advocate? Tell her I am master of arts in the university of Love, and have learnt most cunning and pleasant gymnastics in Italy, unknown to Pyramus and Troilus ... nay, not that, for maidens want the moon, to wit, a Joseph with all the cunning in love’s arts of Naso. Tell her rather, that having been born when Venus was in the house of Saturn, and the scorpion ... you know the kind of jargon ... I came into the world already endowed with knowledge of love’s secrets ... nay ... tell her (his voice catches fire from his words) the years, like village lads when the Feast of St. John draws near, have built up in my soul a heap of lusty green branches, and old dry sticks, and frails of dried rose-petals, and many a garland of rosemary and maiden-hair and ivy and rue, and there it has lain until one glance from those eyes of hers has been the spark to turn it into a crackling, flaming, fragrant-smoked bonfire, a beacon to a thousand farms and hamlets. Tell her I can touch the lute, the vihuela, the guitar, the psalter, Don Tristram’s harp ... ay, and most delicately touch her breasts. And if she wishes a little respite from our love, tell her I can wring tears from her eyes with the Matter of Britain or the Matter of Rome—sad tales (for sadness turns sweet when it is dead) of Dido and Iseult and Guinevere, or make her laugh and laugh again with tales from the clerk Boccaccio. Tell her....

Trotaconventos: Enough, French rogue! You have little need, it seems, of an ambassador. Well, I have seen worse-favoured lads and (with a scowl in the direction of Don Manuel) less honey-tongued. (She rummages in a cupboard and brings out a key.) What will you give me for this, Don Nightingale? I’ll tell you a secret; I have a duplicate key to the postern of near every convent in Seville, but they are not for all my clients, oh no! This opens the postern of San Miguel ... well, well, take it then. And be there to-morrow night at nine o’clock, and I can promise you your nun will not fail you.

Dennys: Oh, dearer than a mother! oh, most bountiful dame! A key! A key! (holds up the key), I have ever loved a key and held it the prettiest toy in Christendom. I vow ’twas a key and not an apple that Eve gave to Adam in Paradise, a key and not an apple the goddesses strove for on Mount Ida, a key into which the Roman smith, Vulcan, put all his amorous cunning when he was minded to fashion a gift well pleasing to his mistress, Venus. May you dream to-night that you are young again, mother, and hold the keys of heaven. And you, sir knight, what dreams shall I wish you? (Eyes Don Manuel quizzically.) Adieu.

Exit.

Trotaconventos: Ay! May his key bring him joy! A very sweet rogue! Well, Don Manuel, has your brain cooled enough to talk with me?

Don Manuel, who has remained passive and motionless during the above scene, suddenly springs to his feet, his eyes blazing, his cheeks flushed.

Don Manuel de Lara (hoarsely): I, too, would have a key ... for the convent of San Miguel.

Trotaconventos: And would you in truth? (suspiciously). Has the convent some fairer nun than Sister Assumcion?

Don Manuel de Lara: How can I say? I have never seen any of the nuns. All I ask you, dame, is for a key.

Trotaconventos: And what if I refuse you a key, Sir Arrogance?

Don Manuel de Lara: I will pay for it all you ask ... even to my immortal soul.

Trotaconventos: And what do I want with your immortal soul? I’d as lief have a wild cat in the house, any market day.

Don Manuel de Lara (clenching his fists and glaring at her fiercely): A key, a key, old hag! Give me a key.

Trotaconventos picks up his scarlet cloak which he has let drop and waves in his face.

Trotaconventos: Come, come, brave bull! And has Love, the bandillero, maddened you with his darts? Old Trotaconventos must turn bull-fighter! Ah! I know the human heart! Dog in the manger, like all men! Too nice yourself for Sister Assumcion, but too greedy to let another enjoy her!

Don Manuel de Lara: A key!

Trotaconventos: No, no, Sir knight. You are not St. Ferdinand and I am not the Moorish king that I should yield up the keys of Seville to you without a parley. Why do you want the key?

Don Manuel de Lara (suddenly growing quiet and eyeing her ironically): What if I have been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and found the sun too hot? I have strange fancies. They say the founder of our house wed with a heathen witch who danced on the hills. (Persuasively) Hearken, I know you love rich fabrics; I have silk coverlets from Malaga that are ballads for the eye instead of for the ear, silk-threaded heathen ballads of Mahound and the doves and Almanzor and his Christian concubine. I have curtains from Almeric—DoÑa Maria has none to rival them in the Alcazar—and so fresh-coloured are the flowers that are embroidered on them, that when I was a child I thought that I could smell them, and my mother, to coax me to eat when a dry, hot wind was parching the Vega, would tell me the bees had culled the honey spread on my bread from the flowers embroidered on these curtains. I have necklets of gold, beaten thin like autumn beech-leaves, taken by my grandsire from the harems of Cordova when he stormed the city with St. Ferdinand; ere they were necklets they were ciboriums of the Goths, rifled by impious Tarik. Precious stones? I have rubies like beakers with the red wine trembling to their very lip ... one almost fears to lift them except with a steady hand for fear they spill and stain one’s garments red, and like to wine, the gifts they bring are health and a merry heart. I have Scythian sapphires that once lay in the bed of the river of Paradise, while to win them Arimaspians were fighting Gryphons; they are the gage of the life to come, they are blue and cold like English ladies’ eyes who go on pilgrimage. And I have emeralds to catch from them a blue shadow like that of a kingfisher on green waters. He who has store of precious stones need fear neither plague nor fever, nor fiends, nor the terrors by night, and with that store I will endow you if you but give me the key. The key, good mother, the key!

Trotaconventos: Very pretty ... but ... well ... I know a certain king, a mighty ugly one, who laughs at the virtues of precious stones.... Aye ... but come, Don Manuel, we are but playing with each other. With your own eyes you saw me give the key of the Convent of San Miguel to the French trovar. Think you I have two?

Don Manuel de Lara (as if stunned): Not two? To the French trovar?

Trotaconventos: Why, yes, Sir knight. Your wits are wool-gathering.

Don Manuel de Lara (in great excitement): My cloak? Where is my cloak? Away! the key!

Exit.

SCENE II

The orchard of San Miguel the following evening at nine o’clock. Near the postern stands Don Manuel de Lara, motionless, his arms folded, his cloak drawn round the lower part of his face. Towards him hurries Sister Assumcion.

Sister Assumcion: Good evening, friar trovar ... and can you not come forward to meet me? I can tell you, sir, it needed all Trotaconventos’s eloquence to send me to the tryst. Never before has her pleading been so honeyed.... Why....

Don Manuel de Lara: I am not the trovar, lady.

Sister Assumcion (starting back): Holy saints defend me! Who, then, are you?... And yet your voice....

Don Manuel de Lara: But I bear a message to you from the trovar.

Sister Assumcion (sharply): Well?

Don Manuel de Lara: His words were these: ‘Tell her the dead grudge us our joys.’

Sister Assumcion: What meant he?

Don Manuel de Lara: I am a messenger, not a reader of riddles.

Sister Assumcion (crossing herself): Strange words! Where was it that you met him?

Don Manuel de Lara: In the streets of Seville ... at night.

Sister Assumcion: And what was he doing?

Don Manuel de Lara: He was standing by a niche in which was an image of Our Lady with a lamp burning before it, and by its light he was examining a key. And he was laughing.

Sister Assumcion: Well?

Don Manuel de Lara: That is all.

Sister Assumcion: All? (Shrilly): Who are you? (Plucks at his cloak which he allows to fall.)

Don Manuel de Lara: Well, and are you any the wiser?

Sister Assumcion: No, your face is unknown to me.

Don Manuel de Lara: And yours to me.

Sister Assumcion: And yet, your voice ... by Our Lady, you are an ominous, louring man. And this strange tale of the trovar ... why am I to credit it?

Don Manuel de Lara: Here is the key.

Sister Assumcion: And where is he?

Don Manuel de Lara: That I cannot say.

Sister Assumcion: Did he look sick?

Don Manuel de Lara: No, in the very bloom of health.

Sister Assumcion: And he was standing under a shrine laughing, and you approached, and he said, “Tell her the dead grudge us our joys”.... Pooh! It rings like a foolish ballad.

Don Manuel de Lara: It is true nevertheless.

Sister Assumcion: And how came you by the key?

Don Manuel de Lara (nonchalantly): The key? (holding it out in front of him and smiling teasingly). It is delicately wrought.

Sister Assumcion (stamping): A madman!

Don Manuel de Lara: So many have said. But now, in that I have borne a message to you, will you return the grace and bear one for me? I have a kinswoman in this sisterhood and I would fain speak with her.

Sister Assumcion (insolently): Have you in truth? We have no demon’s kinswomen here ... well, and what is her name?

Don Manuel de Lara: Sister Pilar.

Sister Assumcion: Aye, she might be ... sprung from the same still-born, white-blooded grandame.

Don Manuel de Lara: Ah! (with suppressed eagerness). You know Sister Pilar well?

Sister Assumcion (with a short laugh): Aye, that I do.

Don Manuel de Lara: And ... is ... is she well?

Sister Assumcion: She is never ailing.

Don Manuel de Lara (absently): Never ailing. You ... you know her well?

Sister Assumcion: Without doubt, a madman! I have told you that I know her but too well.

Don Manuel de Lara: On what does her talk turn?

Sister Assumcion: For the most part on our shortcomings. But her words are few.

Don Manuel de Lara (pulling himself together): Well, you would put me much in your debt if you would carry her this letter. It bears my credentials as her kinsman. I would speak with her at once, as I bear weighty news for her from her home.

Sister Assumcion: And why could you not come knocking at the porter’s lodge, as others do, and at some hour, too, before Compline, when ends the day of a religious?

Don Manuel de Lara: As to the porter’s lodge, I have my own key. And the news, I tell you, will not keep till morning. Handle that letter gingerly; it bears the king’s seal.

Sister Assumcion (awed): Don Pedro’s?

Don Manuel de Lara: Aye.

Sister Assumcion: Well ... as you will. I’ll take your message. Good-night ... Sir demon; are you not of Hell’s chivalry?

Don Manuel de Lara: No.

Sister Assumcion shrugs her shoulders, looks at him quizzically, and exit. A few minutes elapse, during which Don Manuel stands motionless; then Sister Pilar enters; she gives a slight bow and waits.

Don Manuel de Lara: You are Sister Pilar?

Sister Pilar: Yes.

Don Manuel de Lara: In the world the Lady Maria Guzman y Perez?

Sister Pilar: Yes.

Don Manuel de Lara: I am Don Pablo de Guzman, your father’s cousin’s son.

Sister Pilar (with interest): Ah! I have heard my father speak of yours.

Don Manuel de Lara: You have not lately, I think, visited your home?

Sister Pilar: Not since I was professed.... I obey the bull of Pope Boniface, that nuns should keep their cloister.

Don Manuel de Lara: Your sister, Violante, has lately been wed.

Sister Pilar (eagerly): Little Violante? She was but a child when I took the black veil. Whom has she wedded?

Don Manuel de Lara: Er ... er ... a comrade in arms of mine. A knight of Old Castille ... one Don Manuel de Lara.

Sister Pilar: And what manner of man is he? I should wish little Violante to be happy.

Don Manuel de Lara: He passes for a brave soldier. He has brought her the skulls of many Moors. She has filled them with earth and planted them with bulbs. Daffodils grow out of their eyes and nose.

Sister Pilar: A strange device!

Don Manuel de Lara: ’Twas Don Manuel showed her it; such are the whimsies of Old Castille. In that country we like to play with death.

Sister Pilar: Yet ... yet is it not a toy.

Don Manuel de Lara: We rarely play with love.

Sister Pilar: No.

Don Manuel de Lara: No.

Sister Pilar: I would fain learn more of this knight. He loves my sister?

Don Manuel de Lara: Ah! yes. His soul snatched the torch of love from his body, then gave it back again, then again snatched it. She is all twined round with his dreams; she smiles at him with his mother’s eyes; she is Belerma the Fair and DoÑa Alda of his childhood’s ballads. She is a fair ship charged with spices, she is all the flowers that have blossomed since the Third Day of the Creation, she is the bread not made with wheat, she ... she ... she is a key, like this one (holding up the key), but wrought in silver and ivory.

Sister Pilar: A key? Strange! (smiling a little). And what is he to her?

Don Manuel de Lara: He to her? I know not ... perhaps also a key.

(Pause.)

Sister Pilar: So you know my home? You have heard our slaves crooning Moorish melodies from their quarters on moonlight nights, perchance you have handled my father’s chessmen and the Portuguese pennon he won from a French count at Tables ... oh! he was so proud of that pennon! How is the Cid?

Don Manuel de Lara: The Cid? His bones still moulder in CardeÑa.

Sister Pilar: No, no, my father’s greyhound ... the one that has one eye blue and the other brown.

Don Manuel de Lara: Ah! He still sleeps by day and bays at the moon o’ nights.

Sister Pilar: Oh! And how tall has my oak grown now?

Don Manuel de Lara: Your oak?

Sister Pilar: Ah, surely they cannot have forgot to show it you! It was the height of a daffodil when I took the veil. When we were children, you know, we were told an exemplum of a wise Moor who planted trees that under their shade his children’s children might call him blessed, so we—Sancho and Rodrigo and little Violante and me—we took acorns from the pigs’ trough and planted them beyond the orchard, near my mother’s bed of gillyflowers, and mine was the only one that sent forth shoots. Oh! And the bush of Granada roses ... they must have shown you them?

Don Manuel de Lara: To be sure! They are still fragrant.

Sister Pilar: You know, they were planted from seeds my grandsire got in the Alhambra when he was jousting in Granada. My father was wont to call them his harem of Moorish beauties, and there was a nightingale that would serenade them every evening from the Judas tree that shadows them. It was always to them he sang, he cared not a jot for the other roses in the garden.

Don Manuel de Lara: The rose-tree died of blight and the nightingale of a broken heart the year you took the veil.

Sister Pilar: You are jesting!

He smiles, and she gives a little smile back at him.

Don Manuel de Lara: And so it is of roses and nightingales that you ask tidings, and not of mother and father or brothers! Well, it is always thus with exiles. When I have lain fevered with my wounds very far from Old Castille, it has been for the river that flows at the foot of our orchard I have yearned, or for the green Vega dotted with brown villages and stretching away towards the Sierra.

Sister Pilar: I am not an exile.

Don Manuel de Lara: An exile is one who is far from home.

Sister Pilar: This is my home.

Don Manuel de Lara: And do you never yearn for your other one?

Sister Pilar: My other one? Ah, yes!

Don Manuel de Lara: By that you mean Paradise?

Sister Pilar: Yes.

Don Manuel de Lara: And so you long for Paradise?

Sister Pilar: With a great longing.

Don Manuel de Lara: I sometimes dream of Paradise.

Sister Pilar: And how does it show in your dreams?

Don Manuel de Lara (smiling a little): I fear it is mightily like what the trovares—not the monks—tell us of hell.

Sister Pilar (severely): Then it must be a dream sent you by a fiend of the Moorish Paradise, which is indeed hell.

Don Manuel de Lara: That may be. And how does it show in your dreams?

Sister Pilar: A great, cool, columned, empty hall, and I feel at once small and vast and shod with the wind. And all the while I am aware that the coolness and vastness and spaciousness of the hall and my body’s lightness is because there is no sin.

Don Manuel de Lara: But what can you know of sin in a nunnery?

Sister Pilar looks at him suspiciously, but his expression remains impenetrable.

Don Manuel de Lara: Well?

Sister Pilar: You must know ... ’tis the scandal of Christendom ... the empty vows of the religious. Yet when all’s said, ’tis better here than out in the world; we do live under rule, and mark the day by singing the Hours (gazing in front of her as if at some vision). Just over there, perhaps across that hill, or round that bend of the road, a cool, rain-washed world, trees, oxen, men, women, children, thin and transparent, as if made of crystal.... I always held I would suddenly come upon it. (Passionately) Oh, I am so weary of the glare and dust of sin! Everything is heavy and savourless and confined.

Don Manuel de Lara: Always?

Sister Pilar: Yes ... except when I eat Christ in the Eucharist.

Don Manuel de Lara: And then?

Sister Pilar: Then there is vastness and peace.

Don Manuel de Lara: That must be a nun’s communion. When I eat Our Lord I am filled with a great pity for His sufferings on Calvary which the Mass commemorates. There have been times when having eaten Him on the field of battle, my comrades and I, the tears have rained down our cheeks, and from our pity has sprung an exceeding great rage against the infidel dogs who deny His divinity, and in that day’s battle it goes ill with them. And when I eat Him in times of peace, I am filled with a longing to fall upon the MorerÍa, a sword in one hand, a burning brand in the other.

(Pause.)

Sister Pilar: It is already very late ... for nuns. What is the weighty news you bring me?

Don Manuel de Lara: Why, the marriage of your sister Violante!

Sister Pilar (coldly): And was it for that I was dragged from the dorter?

Don Manuel de Lara: I had sworn to acquaint you with the news ... and to-morrow I leave Seville.

Sister Pilar (relenting): And you are well acquainted with Don Manuel de Lara?

Don Manuel de Lara (gives a start): Don Manuel de Lara? Ah, yes ... we are of the same country and the same age. We were suckled by one foster-mother, we yawned over one Latin primer, and gloated over the same tales of chivalry. We learned to ride the same horse, to fly the same hawk; we were dubbed knight by the same stroke of the sword—we love the same lady.

Sister Pilar (amazed): You love my sister Violante?

Don Manuel de Lara: Yes, I love your sister Violante ... and your mother that carried you in her womb, and your father that begat you. (Violently) By the rood, I am sick of mummery! I am Don Manuel de Lara.

Sister Pilar: You?

Don Manuel de Lara: Yes, I——

Sister Pilar: Then you are not the son of my father’s cousin?

Don Manuel de Lara: No.

Sister Pilar: I ... I am all dumbfounded ... I ...

Don Manuel de Lara: I will make it clear. On Tuesday night I heard your talk with Sister Assumcion.

Sister Pilar (in horror): Oh!...

Don Manuel de Lara: I was the man behind the wall whom you justly named the worst kind of would-be adulterer, and....

Sister Pilar: I have no further words for Sister Assumcion’s lover.

Don Manuel de Lara: I am not Sister Assumcion’s lover. The moon has already set and risen, the sun risen and set on his dead body.

Sister Pilar (haughtily): I am not an old peasant woman that you should seek to please me with riddles.

Don Manuel de Lara: I will read you the riddle. Some weeks ago I had business—sent from the Alcazar on a matter pertaining to some herbs—with that old hag Trotaconventos. And through what motive I cannot say, she waxed exceeding eloquent on the charms of Sister Assumcion. We are taught in the Catechism that the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears, are gates by which either fiends or angels may enter.... Well, her words entered my ears and set fire to a great, dry heap of old dreams, old memories, old hopes ... (strange! these are the trovar’s words!) piled high on my heart. I became a flame.... You are of the South, you have never seen a fire consuming a sun-parched vega in the North. Well, a fire must work its will, and, devouring all that blocks its path—flowers, towers, men—drive forward to its secret bourne. Who knows the bourne of fire? I obtained speech with Sister Assumcion; it takes many waters to quench a great fire, but the wind can alter its course. I heard a voice and strange, passionate words ... the course of the fire was altered, but still it drives on, still it consumes.

Sister Pilar (in a small, cold voice): Well?

Don Manuel de Lara: Well? And is it well? My God! Well, a trovar from France who had entered your convent disguised as a friar obtained from Trotaconventos this key, which I likewise desired, first because it opens this postern, secondly because ... toys are apt to take for me a vast significance and swell out with all the potencies of my happiness in this world, my salvation in the next, and thus it happened with this key; the fire rushed on, I killed the trovar and took the key!

Sister Pilar (horror-stricken): You killed him?

Don Manuel de Lara: Yes ... and would have killed a thousand such for the key ... a low, French jongleur! The world is all the better for his loss. The dog! Daring to think he could seduce the nuns of Spain!

Sister Pilar: Well?

Don Manuel de Lara: The rest is told in few words. My madness over (for that night I was mad) the key in my hands, counsel returned to me, and showed me that it was not only through the key I could win to your convent ... it is dreams that open only to this key; strange dreams I only know in fragments ... and I minded me of an exemplum told by the king Don Sancho, in his book, of a knight that craved to talk with a nun, and to affect the same, feigned to be her kinsman. The night I was the other side this wall and you were taunting Sister Assumcion, you named yourself a Guzman whose mother was a Perez. I had but to go to a herald and learn from him all the particulars pertaining to the family of Perez y Guzman.

Sister Pilar: You wished to have speech with me?

Don Manuel de Lara: Yes.

Sister Pilar: Why?

Don Manuel de Lara: I have already said that no one knows the bourne of fire.

Sister Pilar (scornfully): The bourne of fire! The bourne rather of ... I’ll not soil my lips with the word. Let me reduce your “fires,” and “lyres,” and “moons” to plain, cold words; having wearied of Sister Assumcion, you thought you’d sample another nun—one maybe taking a greater stretch of arm to reach; like children with figs—a bite out of one, then flung away, then scrambling for another on a higher branch, that in its turn it, too, may be bitten and thrown. Or, maybe, Sister Assumcion found the trovar more to her taste than you ... yes, I have it! I am to bring a little balm to Sister Assumcion’s discarded lover!

Don Manuel de Lara (eagerly): Oh, lady, very light of ... lady, it is not so. Maybe thus it shows, but in your heart of hearts you know right well it is not so. I am a grievous sinner, but my soul is not light nor is my heart shallow ... and I think already you know ’tis so. Listen; I could have continued feigning to be your kinsman and thus I could have come again to speak with you, and all would have gone well; but your presence gave me a loathing of my deceit, so I stripped me of my lies and stand naked at your mercy. As to Sister Assumcion ... the old hag’s words, when she spoke of her, mated with my dreams and engendered you in my heart, yes, you; and I had but to hear the other’s voice and hearken to her words to know that I had been duped and that she was not you. I swear by God Almighty, by the duty I owe to my liege-lord, by my order of chivalry, that I speak the truth.

Sister Pilar: Well, suppose it true, what then?

Don Manuel de Lara: What then? I have burned my boats and I shall go ... where? And you will to your dorter and be summoned by the cock to matins, and it will all be as a dream (in a voice of agony). No! No! By all the height and depth of God’s mercy it cannot be thus! The stars have never said that of all men I should be the most miserable. Can you see no pattern traced behind all this? Sin? Aye, sin.... But I verily believe that God loves sinners. But why do I speak of sin? You say sin is everywhere; tell me, do you see sin’s shadow lying between us two to-night? Speak! You do not answer. Who knows? It may be that for the first time we have stumbled on the track that leads to Paradise. Angels are abroad ... fiends, too, it may be ... but I am not a light man. Ex utero ante luciferum amavi te ... ’tis not thus the words run, but they came.

Sister Pilar: You speak wildly. What do you want of me?

Don Manuel de Lara: What do I want?... Magna opera Domini ... why does the psalter run in my head?... Great are the works of the Lord ... the sun is a great work, but so is shade from the sun; and the moon is a great work, giving coolness and dreams, and air to breathe is a great work, and so is water to lave our wounds and slake our throats ... I believe all the works of the Lord are found in you.... I could ... oh, God!... Where? Lady, remember I have the key, and every evening at sundown I shall be here ... waiting. It is a vow.

Don Manuel de Lara: Lady Maria! Lady Maria!

Sister Pilar (stopping): She is dead. Do you speak to Sister Pilar?

Don Manuel de Lara: Yes, that is she, Sister Pilar. Listen: receive absolution; communicate; be very instant in prayer; make deep obeisance to the images of Our Lady. Say many Paters and Aves, and through the watches of the night, pray for the dead.

Sister Pilar (in a frightened voice): For the dead?

Don Manuel de Lara: Aye, the dead ... that defend virginity.

Sister Pilar (very coldly): All this has ever been my custom, as a nun, without your admonition.

Don Manuel de Lara: Good-night.

Sister Pilar (almost inaudibly): Good-night.

ACT III

SCENE I

Sister Assumcion: I ask your blessing, father. I confess to Almighty God, and to you, father....

Jaime Rodriguez: Well, daughter—Ten Commandments, Seven Deadly Sins. What of the Second Commandment, which we break whensoever we follow after vanities?

Sister Assumcion: Yes, father. I have not foregone blackening my eyes with kohl ... and I have procured me a crimson scarf the dye of which comes off on the lips ... and ... the pittance I got at Easter I have expended upon perfumes.

Jaime Rodriguez: Ever the same tale, daughter! As I have told you many a time before, civet and musk make the angels hold their noses, as though they were passing an open grave, and a painted woman makes them turn aside their eyes; but ’tis God Himself that turns away His eyes when the painted woman is a nun. The Second Commandment is ever a stumbling-block to you, daughter, and so is the Sixth, for in God’s sight he who commits the deadly sin of Rage breaks that commandment; admit, daughter!

Sister Assumcion: Yes, father; during the singing of None, I did loudly rate Sister Ines and boxed her ears.

Jaime Rodriguez: Shame on you, daughter! Why did you thus?

Sister Assumcion: Because she had spewed out on my seat the sage she had been chewing to clean her teeth after dinner, and, unwittingly, I sat on it.

Jaime Rodriguez: And do you not know that a stained habit is less ungracious in the eyes of God than a soul stained with rage against a sister and with irreverence of His holy service?

Sister Assumcion: Yes, father.

Jaime Rodriguez: Well, for your concupiscence, rage, and unmannerliness: seven penitential psalms with the Litany on Fridays, and a fare of bread and water on the Fridays of this month. There still remains the Tenth Commandment and the deadly sin of Envy; I mind me in the past you have been guilty of Envy ... towards more virtuous and richer sisters.

Jaime Rodriguez (sternly): Daughter, admit!

Sister Assumcion: Father, I....

Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, admit!

Sister Assumcion: It may be ... a little ... Sister Pilar.

Jaime Rodriguez: Aha! Envious of Sister Pilar! And wherein did you envy her?

Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, admit!

Sister Assumcion: I have envied her, father, but ... the matter touches her more than me.

Jaime Rodriguez: You have envied her. Envy is a deadly sin; if I’m to give you Absolution I must know more of the matter.

Sister Assumcion: I have envied her in that ... well, in that she was a Guzman ... and ... and has a room to herself, and a handsome dowry....

Jaime Rodriguez: Doubtless you envy her for these things; but ... I seem to detect a particular behind these generals. Touching what particular matter during these past days have you envied Sister Pilar?

Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, admit!

Sister Assumcion: Oh, father ... ’tis she that is involved ... I....

Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, admit!

Sister Assumcion: There was a man ... it was Trotaconventos ... all he asked was a few words with me, no more ... nothing ... nothing unseemly passed between us ... and then he flouted me ... and then he came bearing a letter and saying he was a kinsman of Sister Pilar.

Jaime Rodriguez: Come, daughter, your confession is like a peasant’s tale—it begins in the middle and has no end. Why should you envy Sister Pilar this kinship?

Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, it is a dire and awful thing to keep back aught in the Confessional; admit.

Sister Assumcion: He was not her kinsman, as it happens, and ... even had he been....

Jaime Rodriguez (eagerly): Well?

Sister Assumcion: Father ... pray....

Jaime Rodriguez: I begin to understand; your foolish, vain, envious heart was sore that this knight treated you coldly, and you have dared to dream that that most virtuous and holy lady, Sister Pilar....

Sister Assumcion (hotly): Dreaming? Had you been in the orchard last evening, and seen what I saw, you would not speak of dreaming!

Jaime Rodriguez (breathlessly): What did you see?

Jaime Rodriguez: You have gone too far, daughter, to turn back now. I must hear all.

Sister Assumcion: Well, last evening, just before Compline, I went down to the orchard to breathe the cool air; and there I came upon Sister Pilar and this knight; but they were so deep in talk they did not perceive me, so I hid behind a tree and listened.

Jaime Rodriguez: Well?

Sister Assumcion: Well, he is, I think, clean mad, and she, too, is of a most fantastical conceit; and sometimes their words seemed empty of all sense and meaning, but sometimes it was as clear as day—little loving harping upon foolishness and little tricks of speech or manner, as it might be a country lad and lass wooing at a saints’ shrine: “there again!” “what?” “You burred your R like a child whose mouth is full of chestnuts.” “Nay, I did not!” “Why, yes, I say you did!” And then a great silence fell on them, she with her eyes downcast, he devouring her with his, and the air seemed too heavy for them even to draw their breath; then up she started, and trembled from head to foot, and fled to the house.

Jaime Rodriguez: But ... but ... yes; thank you, daughter ... I mean, six paters daily for a fortnight. (Gabbles mechanically): Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat: et ego auctoritate ipsius te absolvo ab omni vinculo excommunicationis et interdicti in quantum possum, et tu indiges. Deinde ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Sister Pilar: I ask your blessing, father. I confess to Almighty God, and to you, father....

Jaime Rodriguez: Well?

Sister Pilar: I unwittingly omitted the dipsalma between two verses in choir, father.

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, yes ... what else?

Sister Pilar: Last Sunday I chewed the Host with my back teeth instead of with my front.

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, yes, yes; small sins of omission and negligence ... what else?

Sister Pilar: That is all, father.

Jaime Rodriguez: All you have to confess?

Sister Pilar: All, father.

Jaime Rodriguez: But ... but ... this is ... daughter, you dare to come to me with a Saint’s confession? Bethink you of your week’s ride, ten stone walls to be cleared clean, seven pits from which to keep your horse’s hoofs ... not one of the Ten Commandments broken, daughter? Not one of the Seven Deadly Sins upon your conscience?

Sister Pilar: No, father.

Jaime Rodriguez: But ... beware ... most solemnly do I conjure you to beware of withholding aught in the Confessional.

Jaime Rodriguez: Well, I shall question you. On what have you meditated by day?

Sister Pilar: On many things; all lovely.

Jaime Rodriguez: Of what have you dreamed o’ nights?

Sister Pilar: Of godly matters, cool cathedrals, and Jacob’s ladder.

Jaime Rodriguez: Of man?

Jaime Rodriguez (threateningly): Daughter! Admit!

Sister Pilar: Sometimes ... I ... have dreamed of man.

Jaime Rodriguez: Of a man?

Sister Pilar: Of a monk dwelling in the same community who has sometimes knelt at the altar by my side to receive the Lord.

Jaime Rodriguez: But this is not a mixed community.

Sister Pilar: No, father.

Jaime Rodriguez: What of this monk, then?

Sister Pilar: You asked me, father, of my dreams.

Jaime Rodriguez: And had this monk of dreams the features of a living man?

Sister Pilar: Yes, father.

Jaime Rodriguez (hoarsely): Whose?

Sister Pilar: Sometimes they were the features of my father ... one night of an old Basque gardener we had in my home when I was a child.

Jaime Rodriguez: Pooh! Daughter, you are holding something back.... Beware! What of your allegory of the little stone the giant could not move?

Sister Pilar: I have confessed all my sins.

Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, I refuse to give you Absolution.

Trotaconventos: A word with you, Don Jaime.

Jaime Rodriguez: Anon, anon, good dame. I have pressing business in the town.

Trotaconventos: Your business can wait, but not my words. They touch Sister Pilar. (He starts violently and looks at her expectantly.) You see, you will not to your business till I am done with you ... just one little word to bind you to my will! And in that I ever know the little word that will make men hurrying to church or market stand still as you are doing now, or else if they be standing still to run like zebras: they call me a witch.

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, yes, but you said you had ... a word ... touching ... for my ear.

Trotaconventos: And so I have, Don Jaime; I am making my soul. A hard job, your eyes say. Well, with my brushes and ointments I can make the complexion of a brown witch as fair as a lily, I can make an old face slough its wrinkles like a snake its skin in spring; and who knows what true penitence will not do to my soul?

Jaime Rodriguez: Good dame, I beseech you, to business!

Trotaconventos: And is not the saving of my soul business, if you please?

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, your confessor’s ... in truth, dame, I am much pressed for time.

Trotaconventos: And yet, though time, or the lack of him, expresses all the marrow from your bones, because of that little name you cannot move till I have said my say. Is it true that St. Mary Magdalene was once a bawd and a maker of cosmetics?

Jaime Rodriguez (with weary resignation): Aye.

Trotaconventos: And did you ever hear that she sold her daughter to a Jew, and that daughter a nun?

Jaime Rodriguez (in horror): Never!

Trotaconventos: But if she had, would her tears of penitence have washed it out?

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, if she had confessed it and done penance.

Trotaconventos: And what is more, become herself a scourge of sinners and saved the souls of two innocent babes for the Church?

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, thus would she have acquired merit.

Trotaconventos: Well, I have brought as many maids to bed that multiplied by ten you will have baptised and buried when you are three score years and ten.... Why! it is no more to me than it was to my old father, who owned some land Carmona way, to take a heifer to bull. In truth, if Don Love still reigned in heaven and had not fallen with Satan into hell, your children’s children would be praying to Saint Trotaconventos that she would send them kisses and ribbons and moonless nights; my bones would be lying under the altar of some parish church, and two of my teeth in a fine golden reliquary would cure maids of pimples, lads of warts. All that lies very lightly on my soul ... but there are other things ... and ... (looking round furtively) these nights I’ve sometimes wished for a dog that I might hear his snore.... What if before she died Trotaconventos should be re-christened Convent-Scourge? I have learned ... oh, one of my trade needs must have as many eyes as the cow-herd of the Roman dame, I forget what the trovares call her, and as many ears as eyes ... that a certain nun of this convent ... you grow restive? Why, then, once more I must whisper the magic name and root you to the ground. Sister Pilar is deep in an amour with a knight of the Court ... an overbearing, vain, foolish man against whom I bear a grudge. And Trotaconventos means, before she dies, on one nun at least in place of opening, to shut the convent gate; nay, to bring her to her knees and penitence. Well, what think you?

Jaime Rodriguez: There is some dark thought brooding in your heart, and, unlike the crow, I deem it will hatch out acts black as itself,[4] but the whiteness of her virtue will not be soiled.

Trotaconventos: And is Sister Pilar too firmly settled in her niche to topple down? Yet how she laughs at you! Why, I have heard her say that you are neither man nor priest, but just a bundle of hay dressed up in a soutane, whose head is a hollow pumpkin holding a burning candle, to frighten boors and children with death and judgment on the eve of All Souls.

Jaime Rodriguez (hotly): She said that? When?

Trotaconventos: Why, I cannot mind me of the date; she has used you so often as a strop for sharpening her tongue. But let me unfold my plan. Maybe you know I am ever in and out of the Alcazar with draughts and oils and unguents ... and other toys that shall be nameless ... for DoÑa Maria. Poor soul! The fiends torment her, too, and she clutches at aught that may serve as atonement. I told her the story, and she was all agog to be the instrument for restoring the good name to the convents of Seville. She thanked me kindly for my communication, and sent her camarero to fetch me a roll of Malaga silk, and then she went to Don Pedro feigning ignorance of the knight’s name—for, next to his carbuncle, Don Pedro puts his faith in the strong right arm of Don Manuel de Lara—told him the tale, and wheedled from him a writ signed with the royal seal, the name to be filled in when she had learned it, for he is very jealous of the right which it seems alone among the Kings of Christendom is his—to punish infringements of canon, as well as of civil law. I have the writ, and towards sundown I shall come to the convent orchard with three alguaciles[5] to tear the canting Judas from his lady’s arms.

Jaime Rodriguez (in horror): Her arms? Nay, not that....

Trotaconventos: Why, yes; her arms and lips. Come, come, Sir Priest, think you it is with the feet and nose lovers embrace?

Trotaconventos (chuckling): Oh, well I know the clerks of your kidney! Your talk would bring a blush to a bawd, and you’ll hold your sides and smack your lips over French fables and the like; but when it comes to flesh and hot blood and doing, you’ll draw down your upper lip, turn up your eyes, and cry, “But it’s not true. It cannot be!” Come, pull yourself together—’tis you must be the fowler of the nun.

Jaime Rodriguez (starting): I?

Trotaconventos: You.

Jaime Rodriguez: But the discipline of nuns lies with the Chapter.

Trotaconventos: Yes, yes, but, ’tis the common talk of Seville that the Prioress here is too busy with little hounds and apes and flutings and silk veils to care for discipline ... you’ll not get her wetting her slashed shoes in the orchard dew. You, the chaplain of this house, must meet me to-night outside the orchard’s postern to catch the nun red-handed and drag her before the Prioress.... Ah! to-night you’ll see whether it be only in songs and tales and little lewd painted pictures that folks know how to kiss!

Jaime Rodriguez (violently): I’ll not be there!

Trotaconventos: Not there? Why, Sister Pilar spoke truly: “neither man nor priest”—not man enough to take vengeance on his spurner, not priest enough to chastise a sinner.

Jaime Rodriguez (in a fury of despair): Ah! I will be there.

Trotaconventos: Aha! my little pigeon, how goes the world? Has my lotion cured that little roughness on your cheek? Come, my beauty, let me feel (she draws her hand down her cheek). Why, yes, it’s as smooth and satiny as a queen-apple (makes a scornful exclamation). And so that lantern-jawed Knight prefers Sister Whey to Sister Cream! Well, he’ll get well churned for his pains. Oh, the nasty Templar come to life ... oh, the pompous fool, marching with solemn gait like a lord abbot frowning over a great paunch because, forsooth, he has swallowed the moon and she has dissolved into humours in his belly! Oh ... oh ... with “good dame, do this,” and “good dame, do that,” as though I were his slave ... ’tis sweet when duty and vengeance chime together. (Looking maliciously at Sister Assumcion.) Spurned, too, by the pretty French trovar! Why, it is indeed a deserted damsel! Oh, you needn’t blush and toss your head; when I was of your age and your complexion, I could land a fish as well as throw a line. (Melting.) Never mind, poor poppet, you were wise in that you came to me with your tale of Don Joseph and my lady Susannah for once caught napping ... and that in each other’s arms. I have devised a pretty vengeance which I will unfold to you. Aye! you’ll see that proud white Guzman without her black veil, last in choir for the rest of her days, and every week going barefoot round the cloister while the Prioress drubs her! And the sallow knight who thought my cream had turned when it was but his own sour stomach ... he’ll have to sell his Moorish loot to buy waxen tapers, and be beaten round all the churches of Seville ... may I live to see the day! Never was there a sweeter medicine whereby to save one’s soul, than vengeance on one’s foes. (She pauses for a few seconds, and a strange light comes into her eyes.) Don Juan Tenorio, I have made my choice—I fight with the dead. (shakes her fist at the audience) Arrogant, flaunting youth! Beauty! Hot blood! From the brink of the grave Trotaconventos threatens you.

SCENE II

Sister Pilar (very slowly): You ... have ... ravished ... me.

Don Manuel de Lara (triumphantly): Yes, eyes of my heart; I have unlocked your sweet body.

Sister Pilar: Strange! Has my prayer been answered? And by whom?

Don Manuel de Lara: What prayer, beloved?

Sister Pilar: That night you were the other side of the wall, I prayed that I might behold the woof without the warp of sin, a still, quiet, awful world, and all the winds asleep. (Very low.) IT was like that. (Springing to her feet.) Christ Jesus! Blessed Virgin! Guardian angel, where was your sword? I, a nun, a bride of Christ, I have been ravished. I am fallen lower than the lowest woman of the town, I have forfeited my immortal soul. (Sobbing, she sinks down again beside Don Manuel, and lays her head on his shoulder.) Beloved! Why have you brought me to this? Why, my beloved?

Don Manuel de Lara (caressing her): Hush, little love, hush! Your body is small and thin ... hush!

Sister Pilar: But how came it to fall out thus? Why?

Don Manuel de Lara: Because there was something stronger than the angels, than all the hosts of the dead.

Sister Pilar: What?

Don Manuel de Lara: I cannot say ... something ... I feel it—yet, where are these words? They have suddenly come to me: amor morte fortior—against love the dead whose aid you, and I, too, invoked, cannot prevail.

Sister Pilar (shuddering): Yet the dead kept Sister Assumcion from her trovar.

Don Manuel de Lara: Their souls were barques too light to be freighted with love; for it is very heavy.

Sister Pilar: And so they did not sink.

Don Manuel de Lara: Who can tell if lightness of soul be not the greatest sin of all? And as to us ... the proverb says the paths that lead to God are infinite ... beloved, I feel.... Something holy is with us to-day.

Sister Pilar: Fiends, fiends, wearing the weeds of angels.... (Groans.)

Don Manuel de Lara: Rest, small love ... there, I’ll put my cloak for your head. Why is your body so thin and small?

Sister Pilar (her eyes fixed in horror): I cannot believe that it is really so. A week since, yesterday, an hour since, I ... was ... a ... a ... virgin, and now ... can God wipe out the past?

Don Manuel de Lara: Nay ... nor would I have Him do so.

Sister Pilar: Beloved ... we have sinned ... most grievously.

Don Manuel de Lara: What is sin? I would seem to have forgotten. What is sin, beloved? Be my herald and read me his arms.

Sister Pilar: Death ... I have said that before ... ah, yes, to the trovar ... death, death....

Don Manuel de Lara: With us is neither sin nor death. You yourself said that during IT sin vanished.

Sister Pilar: Yes ... so it seemed ... (almost inaudibly) ’twas what I feel, only ten times multiplied, when I eat Christ in the Eucharist.

Don Manuel de Lara: Hush, beloved, hush! You are speaking wildly.

Sister Pilar: Oh! what did I say? Yes, they were wild words.

Sister Pilar: Do you know, we are in the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi? I seem to have fallen from the wheel of the Calendar to which I have been tied all my life ... saints, apostles, virgins, martyrs, rolled round, rolled round, year after year ... like the Kings and Popes and beggars on the Wheel of Fortune in my mother’s book of Hours. Yes, beloved, we have fallen off the wheel and are lying stunned in its shadow among the nettles and deadly night-shade; but above us, creaking, creaking, the old wheel turns. It may be we are dead ... are we dead, beloved?

Sister Assumcion (breathlessly): Quick! Quick! Not a moment ... they’ll be here! I cannot ... quick! (She presses her hand to her side in great agitation).

Don Manuel de Lara: What is all this? Speak, lady.

Sister Assumcion: Trotaconventos ... Don Jaime ... the alguaciles.

Don Manuel de Lara: Take your time, lady. When you have recovered your breath you will tell us what all this portends.

Sister Assumcion: Away! Away! Trotaconventos has been to Don Pedro ... she has a writ against you ... the alguaciles will take you to prison ... and Don Jaime comes to catch Sister Pilar ... fly! fly! ere ’tis too late.

Sister Pilar (dully): Caught up again on the wheel ... death’s wheel, and it will crush us.

Sister Assumcion (shaking her): Rouse yourself, sister! You yet have time.

Don Manuel de Lara: We are together, beloved ... do you fear?

Sister Pilar: No ... I neither fear, nor hope, nor breathe.

Sister Assumcion: Mad, both of them! I tell you, they come with the alguaciles.

Don Manuel de Lara: And if they came with all the hosts of Christendom and Barbary, yet should you see what you will see. I have a key, and I could lock the postern, but I’ll not do so. (He picks up his sword, girds it on, and draws it.) Why ... all the Spring flows in my veins to-day.... I am the Spring. What man can fight the Spring?

Trotaconventos: There, my brave lads, I told you! Caught in the act ... the new Don Juan Tenorio and his veiled concubine!

Don Manuel de Lara: Silence, you filthy, bawdy hag! (glares at her.) Here stand I, Don Manuel de Lara, and here stands a very noble lady of Spain and a bride of Christ, and here is my sword. Who will lay hands on us? You, Don Priest, pallid and gibbering? You, vile old woman, whose rotten bones need but a touch to crumble to dust and free your black soul for hell? You ... (his eyes rest on the alguaciles). Why! By the rood ... ’tis Sancho and Domingo and Pedro! Old comrades, you and I, beneath the rain of heaven and of Moorish arrows have buried our dead; we have sat by the camp-fire thrumming our lutes or capping riddles (laughs). How does it go? “I am both hot and cold, and fish swim in me without my being a river,” and the answer is a frying-pan ... and in the cold dawn of battle we have kneeled side by side and eaten God’s Body.

Trotaconventos: At him! At him, good lads! What is his sword to your three knives and cudgels? Remember, you carry a warrant with Don Pedro’s seal.

Sancho (dubiously): ’Tis true, captain, we carry a royal warrant for your apprehension.

Trotaconventos: At him! At him!

Don Manuel de Lara: At me then! Air! Fire! Water! A million million banners of green leaves! A mighty army of all the lovers who have ever loved! Come, then, and fight them in me! You, too, were there that day when the whole army saw the awful Ærial warrior before whom the Moors melted like snow ... what earthly arrows could pierce his star-forged mail? I, too, have been a journey to the stars. I wait! At me!

Trotaconventos: Rouse yourselves, you fools! Oh, he’s a wonder with his stars and his leaves. Why, on his own showing, he is but a tumbler at a fair in a suit of motley covered with spangles, or a Jack-in-the-green at a village May-day. Come to your senses, good fellows; we can’t stay here all night.

Don Manuel de Lara: Sancho, hand me that warrant.

Trotaconventos: No! No! You fool!

Don Manuel de Lara: Sir Priest! I see you carry quill and ink-horn.... I fain would borrow them of you.

Trotaconventos: No! No! Do not trust him, Don Jaime.

Don Manuel de Lara (impatiently): Come, Sir Priest.

Don Manuel de Lara (handing the warrant to Sancho): There, Sancho, I have made a little change ... you’ll not go home with an empty bag, after all. (Pointing to Jaime Rodriguez.) There stands your quarry, looking like a sleep-walker ... to gaol with him ... until his arch-priest gets him out ... ’twill make a good fable, “which tells of a Prying Clerk and how he cut himself on his own sharpness.”

Trotaconventos (stamping): You fools! You fools! And you (turning to Don Manuel) ... you’ll lose your frenzied head for tampering with Don Pedro’s seal.

Don Manuel de Lara: Nay, I’d not lose it if I tampered with his carbuncle ... he is menaced by shadows and I fight them for him. Nor, on my honour as a Knight, shall one hair of the head of Sancho and Pedro and Domingo there suffer for this. But you ... you heap of dung outside the city’s wall, you stench of dogs’ corpses, devastating plague ... you shall die ... not by my sword, however (draws his dagger and stabs Trotaconventos). Away with her and your other quarry, Sancho ... good-day, old comrades ... here’s to drink my health (throws them a purse).

Sancho and Pedro lift up the dying Trotaconventos, Domingo leads off Jaime Rodriguez and exeunt. Sister Pilar stands motionless, pale, and wide-eyed, Sister Assumcion has collapsed sobbing with terror on the ground. Don Manuel de Lara stands for a few moments motionless, then quietly walks to the postern and locks it with the key, returns, and again stands motionless; then suddenly his eyes blaze and he throws out his arms.

Don Manuel de Lara (loudly and triumphantly): His truth shall compass thee with a shield: thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by the night. For the arrow that flieth in the day, for the plague that walketh in the darkness: for the assault of the evil one in the noon-day. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. The dead, the dead ... they melted like snow before the Spring ... my beloved!

Sister Assumcion (sobbing): They are carrying the Host to Trotaconventos.

Sister Pilar: Yes ... Corpus Christi ... and then Ascension ... and then Pentecost ... round and round ... Hours ... el SeÑor wins in His Octave.... Is He the living or the dead, Don Manuel?

Don Manuel de Lara: Beloved! What are you saying?

Sister Pilar: What am I saying? Something has had a victory ... maybe the dead ... but the victory is not to you. (Her eyes softening as she looks at him.) Beloved! (makes a little movement as if shaking something off). First, I must finish my confession ... the one I made this morning was sacrilege ... something had blinded me. They say that in the Primitive Church the penitents confessed one to other, so will I.

Sister Pilar: I confess to Almighty God, and to you, little sister, because I have sinned against you exceedingly, in thought, word and deed (she strikes her breast three times), through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. You were wiser than I, little sister, and knew me better than I knew myself. I deemed my soul to be set on heavenly things, but therein was I grievously mistaken. When I chid you for wantonness, thinking it was zeal for the honour of the house, it was naught, as you most truly said, but envy of you, in that you gave free rein to your tongue and your desires. And, though little did I wot of it, I craved for the love of man as much as ever did you, nay, more. Even that poor wretch, Don Jaime ... it was as if I came more alive when I talked with him than when I was in frater or in dorter with naught but women. Then that poor trovar ... he gave me a longing for the very things I did most condemn in talk with him ... the merry rout of life, all noise and laughter and busyness and perfumed women. Then when he gazed at you as does a prisoner set free gaze at the earth, my heart seemed to contract, my blood to dry up, and I hated you. And then ... and then ... there came Don Manuel, and time seemed to cease, eternity to begin. All my far-flown dreams came crowding back to me like homing birds; envy, rage, pride dropped suddenly dead, like winds in a great calm at sea ... and that great calm was ... Lust.

Sister Pilar: Yes ... Lust. Little sister, I verily believe that in spite of foolishness and vanity, all the sins of this community are venial ... excepting mine. For I am Christ’s adulteress (Don Manuel starts forward with a stifled cry, but she checks him with upraised hand), a thing that Jezebel would have the right to spurn with her foot ... yes, little sister, I, a bride of Christ, have been ravished. (Seizing her hands.) Poor little sister ... just a wild bird beating its wings against a cage through venial longings for air and sun! I am not worthy to loose the latchet of your shoe.

Sister Assumcion: Oh ... Sister ... ’tis I ... I envied you first your fine furniture and sheets and ... things ... and then the knight there ... spurning me for you ... and I told Trotaconventos ... and Don Jaime ... and it is all my doing ... and ’tis I that crave forgiveness.

Sister Pilar: Hush, little sister, hush! (Strokes her hands.) Sit quiet a little while and rest ... you have been sadly shaken.

Don Manuel de Lara: And what have you to say to me—my beloved?

Sister Pilar: Only that I fear my little sister and I are late for Vespers.

Don Manuel de Lara: Oh, very soul of my soul! White heart of hell wherein I must burn for all eternity! I see it now ... we have been asleep and we have wakened ... or, maybe, we have been awake and now we have fallen asleep. Look! look at the evening star caught in the white blossom—the tree’s cold, virginal fruition (springs to his feet). Vespers ... the Evening Star ... bells and stars and Hours, they are leagued against me ... and yet I thought ... is it the living or the dead? I cannot fight stars ... wheels ... the Host ... Beloved, will you sometimes dream of me? No need to answer, because I know you will. Our dreams ... God exacts no levy on our dreams ... the angels dare not touch them ... they are ours. First, heavy penance, then, maybe, if I win forgiveness, the white habit of St. Bruno. When you are singing Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, I, too, shall be singing them—through the long years. God is merciful and the Church is the full granery of His Grace ... maybe He will pardon us; but it will be for your soul that I shall pray, not mine.

Sister Pilar (almost inaudibly): And I for yours ... beloved. (Turns towards Sister Assumcion): Come, little sister.

SCENE III

Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion.

For He hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; he hath blessed thy children within thee.

Who hath made peace in thy borders: and filled thee with the fat of corn.

Who sendeth forth His speech upon the earth: His word runneth very swiftly.

Who giveth snow like wool: He scattereth mist like ashes.

He sendeth His crystal like morsels: who shall stand before the face of His cold?

He shall send out His word and shall melt them: His wind shall blow, and the waters shall run.

Who declareth His word unto Jacob: His Justice and judgments unto Israel.

He hath not done in like manner to every nation: and His judgement He hath not made manifest to them.

The Lord, who putteth peace on the borders of the Church, filleth us with the fat of wheat.

Brethren: For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread, and giving thanks, broke, and said: “Take ye and eat: this is my body, which shall be delivered for you: this do for the commemoration of me.”

For a few seconds there was silence; and Teresa saw several ladies exchanging amused, embarrassed glances.

Then Harry could be heard saying, “Er ... er ... er ... a piece ... er ... amazingly well adapted to its audience ... er ... er....” All turned round in the direction of his voice, and some smiled. Then again there was a little silence, till a gallant lady, evidently finding the situation unbearable, came up to Teresa and said, “Thrilling, my dear, thrilling! But I’m afraid in places it’s rather too deep for me.”

Then others followed her example. “What is an auto-sacramentÁl, exactly?” “Oh, really! A knight of the time of Pedro the Cruel? I always connected Don Juan ... or how is it one ought to pronounce it? Don Huan, is it? I always connected him with the time of Byron, but I suppose that was absurd.” “I liked the troubadour’s jolly red boots; are they what are called Cossack boots? Oh, no, of course, that’s Russian.”

But it was clear they were all horribly embarrassed.

The babies and children had, for some time, been getting fretful; and now the babies were giving their nerve-rending catcalls, the children their heart-rending keening.

In one of her moments of insight, Jollypot had said that there is nothing that brings home to one so forcibly the suffering involved in merely being alive as the change that takes place in the cry of a child between its first and its fourth year.

But the children were soon being comforted with buns; the babies with great, veined, brown-nippled breasts, while Mrs. Moore, markedly avoiding any member of the Lane family, moved about among her women with pursed mouth.

Then the actors appeared, still in their costumes, and mingled with the other guests, drinking tea and chatting. The DoÑa, eyebrows quizzically arched, came up to Teresa.

“My dear child, what were you thinking of? Just look at Mrs. Moore’s face! That, of course, makes up for a lot ... but, still! And I do hope they won’t think Spanish convents are like that nowadays.”

Thank goodness! The DoÑa, at least, had not smelt a rat.

Then she saw Guy coming towards her; for some reason or other, he looked relieved.

“I wish to God Haines would make his people stylisize their acting more—make them talk in more artificial voices in that sort of play. They ought to speak like the Shades in Homer; that would preserve the sense of the Past. There’s nothing that can be so modern as a voice.” He looked at her. “It’s funny ... you know, it’s not the sort of thing one would have expected you to write. It has a certain gush and exuberance, but it’s disgustingly pretty ... it really is, Teresa! Of course, one does get thrills every now and then, but I’m not sure if they’re legitimate ones—for instance, in the last scene but one, when Don Manuel becomes identified with the Year-Spirit.”

So that was it! He had feared that, according to his own canons, it would be much better than it was; hence his look of relief. She had a sudden vision of what he had feared a thing written by her would be like—something black and white, and slightly mathematical; dominoes, perhaps, which, given that the simple rule is observed that like numbers must be placed beside like, can follow as eccentric a course as the players choose, now in a straight line, now zigzagging, now going off at right angles, now again in a straight line; a sort of visible music. And, indeed, that line of ivory deeply indentured with the strong, black dots would be like the design, only stronger and clearer, made by an actual page of music; like that in a portrait she had once seen by Degas of a lady standing by a piano.

But she felt genuinely glad that her play should have achieved this, at least, that one person should feel happier because of it; and she was quite sincere when she said, “Well, Guy, it’s an ill wind, you know.”

He grew very red. “I haven’t the least idea what you mean,” he said angrily.

After that, Concha came up, and was very warm in her congratulations. Did she guess? If she did, she would rather die than show that she did. Teresa began to blush, and it struck her how amused Concha must be feeling, if she had guessed, at the collapse of Sister Assumcion’s love affairs, and at the final scene between Pilar and Assumcion—Pilar’s noble self-abasement, Assumcion’s confession of her own inferiority.

And David? He kept away from her, and she noticed that he was very white, and that his expression was no longer buoyant.