Hope Mirrlees

“ Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
Jasper began to wriggle worse than ever, and, having first cast a furtive glance at his grandmother and aunts, said shrilly, “I dreamt of Mummie last night ... and she had ... she had ... such a funny nose....” and his voice tailed off in a little giggle, half proud, half guilty.
“Jasper!” exclaimed simultaneously the Doña, Teresa, Concha, and Anna, in tones of shocked reproval. ”

“ Nevertheless she went on with her reading, and, as though from among the many brasses of knights with which is inset the aisle of some church, their thinly traced outlines blurred and rubbed by time and countless feet, one particular one were slowly to thicken to a bas-relief, then swell into a statue in the round, then come to life—gray eyes glittering through the vizor, delicately chased armour clanking, the church echoing to oaths in Norman-French,—so gradually from among the flat, uniform, sleeping years of the Middle Ages did the fourteenth century come to life in Teresa’s mind. ”

“ The moment Rory had entered the room, Teresa had felt a sudden little contraction of her throat, and had almost exclaimed aloud, “At last!”
In their childhood, she and Pepa had dreamed of, and craved for, a man doll, made of some supple material which would allow of its limbs being bent according to their will, its face modelled and painted with a realism unknown to the toy shops, a little fair moustache of real hair that could be twisted, and real clothes that, of course, came off and on: waistcoat, tie, collar, braces, and in a pocket a little gold watch. ”

“ Dark, winding, high-walled streets, called after Pedro the Cruel’s Jewish concubines; one’s milk and vegetables brought by donkeys, stepping as delicately as Queen Guinevere’s mule. One by one the candles of the Tenebrario extinguished to the moan of the miserere, till only the waxen thirteenth remains burning; goats, dozens of wooden Virgins in stiff brocade, every one of them sin pecado concebida, city of goats and Virgins ... yes, that’s it—city of goats and Virgins.
“By the way,” said Concha nonchalantly, “I’ve asked Eben to lunch on Sunday.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ So Teresa and David sat on together, watching Concha and Rory glimmering down the border till they melted into the invisible view.
It was a glorious night. The lawns of the sky were dusty with the may of stars. The moon, no longer flower-like and idle, shone a cold masterpiece of metallurgy. The air was laden with the perfumes of shrubs and flowers. ”

“ But Teresa felt the presence of the angel Intimacy—a presence which, when it comes between a man and a woman, shuffles the dreams and, so it seems, causes the future to stir in its sleep.
“I say! Isn’t this extraordinary? We are getting on well, aren’t we? One doesn’t often talk to a person about these sort of things the first time one meets them,” and Rory gave a light, mocking laugh.
Teresa felt absurdly, exaggeratedly disappointed; and why did he use such a strongly scented hair-wash?
The second game of Snooker came to an end, David, this time, potting the black. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She probably thought Concha was not good enough for her nephew.
And the Doña who, for the last few days, had been half hoping that the Immaculate Conception herself, star-crowned, blue-robed, would to-morrow step down from the clouds to forbid the banns and save her namesake from perdition—the Doña actually found herself saying with some heat: “They’ve known each other for nearly a year; that is surely a long time, these days. I see no reason why it shouldn’t be a most happy marriage.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such a line—beyond which “the sun and the sky are more beautiful”—cuts across the range of every one’s vision; and the group of flower-bordered girls were certainly beyond that line for all who were watching them. Once again Teresa felt as if she were suddenly seeing the present as the past; and as long as she lived it would always be as that picture that she would see Concha’s wedding.
“Vera incessu patuit dea,” murmured Hugh, and then he added, a little wistfully, “they do look jolly!” ”

“ Every minute bed-time was drawing nearer, and anxious eyes kept turning towards the door; would any one come before it was too late, and Jasper was already plunging and “being silly” in the bath, while Anna, clad in a pink flannel dressing-gown, her hair in two tight little plaits, was putting tidy her books and toys, and—so as to perform the daily good deed enjoined by the Girl Guides—Jasper’s too?
Their craving for the society of “grown-ups” was as touching and inexplicable, it seemed to Teresa, as that of dogs. ”

“ Sister Assumcion (sobbing) : They are carrying the Host to Trotaconventos.
All three kneel down and cross themselves. The sound of the bell and the cry of “el Señor” grow fainter and fainter in the distance; when it can be heard no more, they rise. Sister Pilar draws her hand over her eyes, then opens them, blinking a little and gazing round as if bewildered.
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? ”

“ But every life, or group of lives, is deaf to the chord, stands safe on the bank of the river, till a definite significant moment, which, looked back upon, seems to have announced its arrival with an actual noise—a knocking, or a rumbling. To Teresa, it seemed that that moment for them all at Plasencia had been Pepa’s death, two years ago—that had been what had plunged them into the river. Before, all of them (the Doña too) had lived in Eternity. Now, when Teresa awoke in the night, the minutes dripped, one by one, on to the same nerve, till the agony became almost unbearable ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Heal, the Doña’s bed had not been entirely compact of roses.
When, an hour or so later, Dick climbed into his bed, she said, “I suppose you realise that Harry has forgotten all about my Pepa?”
“Oh, nonsense, Anna! Poor chap, you don’t expect him to be always whimpering, do you? I tell you, the English aren’t demonstrative.”
“Nor are the Spaniards, but they have a great deal of heart all the same; and Harry has absolutely none—I don’t believe he has any soul either.”
“So much the better then; he can’t be damned.” ”

“ Concha gurgled with laughter—pleasantly, like a child being tickled—at the Doña’s mimicry; and the atmosphere cleared.
Teresa remembered Guy Cust’s once saying that conversation among members of one family was a most uncomfortable thing. When one asks questions it is not for information (one knows the answers already) but to annoy. It is, he had said, as if four or five men, stranded for years on a desert island with a pack of cards, had got into the habit of playing poker all day long, and that, though the game has lost all savour and all possibilities of surprise ”

“ I’ve never seen a game of Snooker over so quickly ... owing to the amazing brilliance of our Captain Dundas,” cried Arnold.
So they started another game, this time including David; and as it had been decided that Rory was too good for parlour-billiards, he sat down on the sofa beside Teresa.
They began to talk—about the War, of course: all the old platitudes—the “team-spirit,” for instance. “It’s football, you know, that makes us good fighters. It’s about the only thing we learn at school—the team-spirit. It teaches us to sacrifice stunts and showy play and that sort of thing to the whole.” ”

“ Teresa had got her background; and now the vision came.
But she was doubtful as to whether it was a vision of the Past such as De Quincey had had in his dream, or Monticelli shown in his picture; for one thing, she found an almost irresistible pleasure in intagliating her writing with antiquarian details, and indeed it [184] was more a vision of a situation, a situation adorned by the Past, than a vision of the Past itself.
She wrote all day; neither thinking nor reading, but closely guarding her mind from the contamination of outside ideas. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A horse was dragging a plough against the sky-line, and here and there thin streams of smoke were rising from heaps of smouldering weeds. In the nearer fields, Teresa could discern small, moving objects of a dazzling whiteness—white leghorns gleaning the stubble; and from time to time there reached her the noise of a distant shot, heralding a supper of roast hare or partridge in some secluded farm-house. Then, like a Danish vessel bound for pillage in Mercia, white, swift, compact, a flock of wood pigeons would flash [4] through the air to alight in a far away field and rifle the corn. ”

“ A sense of the Past is an emotion that is sudden, and swift, and perishable—a flash of purple-red among dark trees and bracken as one rushes past in a motor-car, and it is already half a mile behind before one realises that it was rhododendrons in full flower, and had one had time to explore the park one would have found its acres of shade all riddled with them, saturated with them. ”

“ 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. ”