1
Anna and Jasper came to Plasencia for their Easter holidays, and towards the end of April Concha and Rory got back from Scotland. It was the first time Teresa had seen them together since their engagement, and their relationship was so comfortable and intimate that, to her, it almost smacked of incest.
As to the Doña, the presence of Rory in the flesh seemed to undo all the reconciliatory work of the past two months, and her attitude once more became uncompromising, her heart bitter and heavy.
Harry and Arnold came down for the last “week-end” in April; so they were now quite a big party again, and Teresa did not see so much of David.
It was dear that Concha was bursting with the glories of Drumsheugh; but she had no one to tell them to; the Doña and Teresa were out of the question, and Arnold had sulked with her ever since her engagement. However, one afternoon when they were sitting in the loggia, she could keep it in no longer: “I simply love Drumsheugh,” she began; Arnold immediately started talking to Harry, but to her surprise she found Teresa clearly prepared to listen sympathetically. “It isn’t a ‘stately home of England’ sort of thing, you know, but square and plain and solid, and full of solid Victorian furniture; and the portraits aren’t ruffles and armour and that sort of thing, but eighteenth-century-judges-sort-of-people. There’s a perfectly divine Raeburn of Rory’s great-great-grandmother playing ring-o’-roses with her children. It’s altogether very eighteenth century ... the sort of house one can imagine Dr. Johnson staying in, when he was in Scotland, and very much enjoying the claret and library. And there’s no ‘culture’ about it—it’s filled with cases of stuffed birds, and stuffed foxes and things....”
“What, Concha?” cried Arnold, breaking off in the middle of his sentence to Harry, “did you say stuffed foxes? I never thought much of the Scotch, but I didn’t think they were as bad as that. Do you really shoot foxes in Scotland, Dundas?”
Since the engagement he had gone back to calling Rory, “Dundas.”
Rory was speechless with laughter: “Oh, Concha! What are you talking about?” he spluttered, and poor Concha, who, since her engagement, had gone in for being a sporting character, blushed crimson.
For the first time Teresa saw something both pretty and touching in Concha’s attitude to life: as a little girl-guide, an Anna, in fact, passionately collects, badges for efficiency in heterogeneous activities—sewing, playing God Save the King on the piano, gardening, tennis, reciting Kipling’s If; so Concha collected the various manifestations of “grown-up-ness”—naughty stories, technical and sporting expressions, scandal about well-known people; and it was all, really, so innocent.
“You got on very well with Colonel Dundas, didn’t you?” she said, turning the subject to what she knew was a source of gratification.
“Oh, yes, she scored heavily with Uncle Jimmy,” said Rory proudly. “He’s in love with her—really in love with her. But I don’t know whether that’s much of a triumph—he’s the bore of ten clubs.”
Concha began to count on her fingers: “The Senior, the Travellers’, Hurlingham, ... er....”
“The Conservative Club, Edinburgh,” prompted Rory.
“The Conservative, Edinburgh—what’s the St. Andrews one?”
“Royal and Ancient, you goose!” he roared.
“Oh, yes, of course, Royal and Ancient. Then the North Berwick one—that’s six. Then there’s....”
At that moment the Doña arrived for tea, cutting them off for the time from this grotesque source of pride; as in her presence there could be no talk of Drumsheugh and “Uncle Jimmy.”
“Yes, the garden is forging ahead. What I like is roses; do you think this will be a good year for them? But I do like them to have a smell.”
“Guy says that Shakespeare is wrong and that there is something in a name, and that the reason they don’t smell so sweet now is that they’re called by absurd names like ‘Hugh Dickson’ and ‘Frau Karl Druschke.’”
“Well, how does he explain that Frau Karl has been called ‘Snow Queen’ since the War and still hasn’t any smell?”
“By the way, where is Guy? We haven’t seen him since the dance at Christmas. Do you remember how queer he was the next morning?”
“He’s been in Spain, but he should be back soon,” said Arnold, with a resentful look at Teresa.
Then Anna and Jasper trotted across the lawn and on to the loggia, both very grubby; Jasper carrying a watering-can.
“We’ve been gardening,” said Anna proudly.
“That ... er ... is a ... er ... self-evident proposition that needs no demonstration, as the dogs’-meat man said to the cook when she ... er ... told him he wasn’t a gentleman,” quoted Harry.
“Darlings, isn’t it time for your own tea? And what would Nanny say? You really oughtn’t to come to grown-up tea without washing your hands,” protested Teresa—in vain; for the Doña had already provided each of them with a large slice of cake.
Then Jasper’s roving eye perched upon David, meditatively stirring his tea. He began to snigger: “Silly billy! You can’t make flowers grow. Anna says so.”
“Jasper! Don’t be so silly,” said Anna, reddening.
“But you said so,” whined Jasper.
“What’s this? What’s it all about?” laughed Rory.
“Nothing,” said Anna sulkily.
“Now then; out with it, old thing!”
“Yes, darling, why should Mr. Munroe make flowers grow?”
“Oh, well,” and Anna blushed again, “You see, it was about holy water. I thought if it was really like that Mr. Munroe might bless the water in our watering-can, so that they’d all grow up in the night ... just to show whether it was true or not, you know.”
Harry looked round with an unmistakable expression of paternal pride; Dick, Arnold, Concha and Rory exploded into their several handkerchiefs; Jollypot murmured, “Dear little girl!” The Doña looked sphinx-like; and Teresa glanced nervously at David.
“I’m awfully sorry, Anna, but I fear I can’t do that for you—for one thing, I’m not yet a priest,” he answered, blushing crimson.
“By the way, Mr. Munroe, when are you going to be ordained?” asked the Doña suavely. “Let me see ... it could be in September, Our Lady’s birth month, couldn’t it? I read an article by a Jesuit Father the other day about the ‘Save the Vocations Fund,’ and he said there was no birthday gift so acceptable to Our Lady as the first mass of a young priest.”
The Doña rarely if ever spoke upon matters of faith in public; so Teresa felt that her words had a definite purpose, and were spoken with concealed malice.
“Good God!” muttered Harry; then, turning to Arnold, he said—“it’s ... it’s ... astounding. Birthday presents of young priests! It’s like the Mountain Mother and her Kouretes!” He spoke in a very low voice; but Teresa overheard.
The smell of this half ridiculous, half sinister, little incident soon evaporated from the atmosphere, and the usual foolish, placid Plasencia talk gurgled happily on:
“Well, if this weather goes on we ought soon to be getting the tennis-court marked ... oh Lord! I wish it was easier to get exercise in this place.”
“Well, I’m sure Anna and Jasper would be only too delighted to race you round the lawn.”
“Oh, by the way, didn’t you say there was a real tennis court somewhere in this neighbourhood?”
“Yes, but it belongs to a noble lord ... oh, by the way, Dad, have you had that field rolled? If there’s to be hay in it this year, it really ought to be, you know.”
“Yes, yes, but a heifer’s far more valuable after she’s calved, far better wait.”
“Does Buckingham Palace make its own light or get it from the town?”
“From the town, I should think.”
“What happens then if there’s a strike of the electric light people?”
“Oh, what a great thought! Worthy of Anna.”
“It’s a curious thing that ... er ... a reference to ... er ... liquid in any form inevitably tickles an undergraduate: if I ... er ... er ... happen to remark in a lecture that ... er ... moisture is necessary to a plant, the room ... er ... rocks with laughter for five minutes!”
And so on, and so on.
But for Teresa, the shadow of that other plot had fallen over the silver and china and tea-cups, over the healthy English faces, over the tulips and wallflowers in the garden; and over the quiet view, made by the sowing and growing and reaping of the sunbrowned rain-washed year; but it has a ghost—the other; shadowy Liturgical Year, whose fields are altars in dim churches and whose object, by means of inarticulate chants and hierophantic gestures, is to blow some cold life into a still-born Idea, then to let it die, then, by a febrile reiteration of psalms and prophecies, to galvanise it again into life.
And David, sitting there a little apart, though he could talk ably about business and economics and agriculture—he was merely a character in the Plot. He was like a ghost, but a ghost that dwarfed and unsubstantialised the living. He was a true son of that race—her race, too, through the “dark Iberians”—who, carrying their secret in their hearts, were driven by the Pagans into the fastnesses of the hills, the hills whence, during silent centuries, they drew the strength of young men’s dreams, the strength of old men’s visions, and within whose cup quietly, unceasingly, they plied their secret craft: turning bread into God. And though in time St. Patrick (so says one of the legends), betrayed the secret to Ireland, and St. Columba, his descendant in Christ, to England, and they, the men of the Scottish hills, lost all memory of it in harsh and homely heresies, yet once it had been theirs—theirs only.
Yes; but it was all nonsense—a myth, a plot. She was becoming hag-ridden again; she must be careful.