2
September turned into October; the apples grew redder and the fields—the corn and barley gradually being carted away to be stacked in barns—grew plainer, severe expanses of a uniform buff colour, suggesting to Teresa the background of a portrait by Velasquez.
The children were going back to Cambridge; and their excitement at the prospect might have convinced the Doña, had she been open to conviction, that their life there was not an unhappy one.
They were sorry to leave the Doña and Teresa and ’Snice and the garden—that went without saying; but the prospect of a railway journey was sufficient to put Jasper, who never looked very far ahead, into a state of the wildest excitement, and the occasional nip in the air during the past week had given Anna an appetite for the almost forgotten joys of lessons, Girl-Guides, the “committee” organised by a very grand friend of twelve for collecting money for the Save the Children Fund (one was dubbed a member of the committee with the President’s tennis-racket and then took terrible oaths of secrecy), and soon Christmas drawing near, when Nanny would take them down to brilliantly lighted Boots, with its pleasant smell of leather and violet powder, to choose their Christmas cards.
Teresa knew what she was feeling; it was a pleasant thought, all the small creatures hurrying eagerly back from sea or hills or valleys all over the kingdom—tiny Esquimaux swarming back from their isolated summer fisheries to the civic life of winter with its endless small activities, so ridiculous to the outside world, so solemn, and so terribly important, to themselves.
Shortly after they had reached Cambridge Teresa got the following letter from Harry Sinclair:
“Dear Teresa,—Since his return from Plasencia Jasper has been demanding a cake that turns into a man.
“At first I supposed I had told him about those gingerbread dragoons that old Positivist Jackson used to bring us when we were children at Hastings.
“I was mistaken.
“I discover from Anna what he wanted was ‘the true, real, and substantial presence of the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, together with His Soul and Divinity, in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist.’
“Now, look here, Teresa, I won’t stand it. If I notice any further morbid cravings in Jasper for water, bread, wine, or oil, I shall stop his visits to Plasencia.
“It really is insufferable—and you know quite well that Pepa would have objected as much as I do.
“Yrs.
“H. J. S.”
It only made Teresa laugh; she knew how Harry must have enjoyed writing it—could see him jumping on to his bicycle and hurrying down to the University Library to verify in one of the books of the late Lord Acton the definition of Transubstantiation.
Unfortunately she left it lying about; and it fell into the hands of the Doña, whom Teresa found in the act of reading it, with set face and compressed lips.
At the bottom of her heart the Doña attached as little importance to it as Teresa had done: the fact of its having been written to Teresa and not to herself marked it as being nothing more than a harmless and half facetious means of relieving his feelings; besides, she knew that to sever all connection with Plasencia would be too drastic a step—involving too many complications, too many painful scenes—also, too dramatic a step to be taken by Harry in cold blood.
But there are very few people who have the strength and poise of intellect to resist, by an honest scrutiny of facts, the exquisite pleasure of thinking themselves despitefully used by their enemy—very few too who can resist the pleasure of avenging this despiteful usage on a third and, to the vulgar eye, quite innocent person.
The human soul requires for the play that is its hidden life but a tiny cast; and to provide parts for its enormous company it falls back upon the device of understudies, six or seven sometimes to one part. When this is properly understood the use of the scapegoat will seem less unjust.
Anyhow, the Doña chose to pretend to herself that she took Harry’s letter seriously; and Dick was chosen as the scapegoat.
There is prevalent in Spain a system of barter with the Deity, the contracts entered into being of the following nature: If God (or the Virgin or Saint ...) will make Fulano faithful to Fulana, Fulana will not enter a theatre for a month; or if God will bring little Juanito safely through his operation for adenoids, Fulano will try to love his mother-in-law.
As a result of Harry’s letter the Doña entered into such a contract: her Maker was to ensure the ultimate saving of her grandchildren’s souls; while her part of the bargain affected Dick and, incidentally, was extremely agreeable to herself.
In her bedroom an identical little comedy was enacted on two separate nights. On its being repeated a third time, Dick burst out angrily: “Oh, very well then ... it’s a bit ... no one could say I bothered you much nowadays.... I know—that damned priest has had the impertinence to interfere in my affairs.... I suppose ... I won’t ... very well, then!”
If it had not been dark he would have seen that the Doña’s eyes were bright and shining with pleasure.
For hours he lay awake; a hotch-potch of old grievances boiling and seething in his mind.
Always him, always him, giving in every time: that summer years ago when he had given up golf and Harlech to take them all to Cadiz instead—very few men would have done that! And if they were going to a play always letting one of the children choose what it was to be—and jolly little gratitude he got for it all! Jolly little! Snubbed here, ignored there ... glimpses he had had of other homes came into his head: “hush, dear, don’t worry father”; “now then, Smith, hurry! hurry! The master must not be kept waiting”; “all right, dear, all right, there’s plenty of time.... Gladys dear, just run and fetch your father’s pipe.... Now, Charlie, where’s father’s overcoat? Good-bye darling, I’ll go to the Stores myself this morning and see about it for you ... good-bye, dear, don’t tire yourself ...” whereas here it was: “Well, Dick; I really don’t see how you can have the car this morning—Arnold wants it and he’s so seldom here....” Arnold! Arnold! Arnold! Oh what endless injustice that name conjured up! Actually it was years since they had had Welsh rarebit as a savoury because Arnold had once said the smell made him feel sick ... and oh, the cruelty and injustice on that birthday when the Doña with an indulgent smile had asked him what he would like for dinner (damn her impertinence—as if it wasn’t his own house and his own food and his own money!), and he had chosen ox-tail soup, sole, partridge, roly-poly and marrow-bones—ox-tail soup had been “scrapped” because Arnold didn’t like it, sole because they’d had it the night before, roly-poly because Arnold said it wasn’t a dinner-sweet. As to the marrow-bones—they had not been “scrapped,” indeed, but as every one knows, a dish of marrow-bones is a lottery, and he, Dick, the Birthday King, had drawn a blank—a hollow mockery, in which a tiny Gulliver might have sat dry and safe, not a single drop of grease falling on his wig or his broadcloth. But Arnold’s had been a lordly bone, dropping at first without persuasion two or three great blobs of semi-coagulated amber, and then yielding to his proddings the coyer treasures of its chinks and crannies, what time he had cried triumphantly, “More toast, please, Rendall!” And the Doña had watched him with a touched and gratified smile, as if she were witnessing for the first time the incidence of merit and its deserts. And it was not merely that the unfilial Arnold had wallowed in grease, not offering out of his abundance one slim finger of sparsely besmeared toast to his dry and yearning father, but the Doña had not cast in his direction one glance of pity—and it was his birthday, too!... oh that Arnold! Who was it ... Harry or Guy ... anyway he had heard some one saying that every father feels like a Frankenstein before a grown-up son ... well, not many of them had as much cause as he had ... despised, snubbed whenever he opened his mouth. Oh damn that Arnold! In what did he consider his great superiority to lie? Curious thing how his luck had always been so bad: he had not got into the Fifteen at Rugby because he had put his knee out—so he said; he had failed to get a scholarship at Trinity because his coach had given him the wrong text-book on constitutional history—so he said; he had only got a second in his tripos, because the Cambridge school of history was beneath contempt—so he said. And then the War and all the appalling fuss about him—really, one would have thought he was fighting the Germans single-handed! And Dick, creeping about with his tail between his legs and being made to feel a criminal every time he smiled or forgot for a second that Arnold was in the trenches ... and, anyhow, if he had been so wonderful, why hadn’t he the V.C., or at least the Military Cross?
Arnold was a fraud ... and a damned impertinent one! Well, it was his mother’s fault ... mothers were Bolsheviks, yes, Bolsheviks—by secret propaganda begun in the nursery setting the members of a family against their head. He was nothing to his children—nothing.
Just for a second he got a whiff of the sweet, nauseating, vertiginous, emotion he had experienced at the birth of each of them in turn—an emotion rather like the combined odours of eau de Cologne and chloroform; an emotion which, like all the most poignant ones, had a strong flavouring of sadism; for it sprang from the strange fierce pleasure of knowing that the body he loved was being tortured to bear his children.
Yes, he had loved her ... there had been times ... well, was he going to put up with it for ever? Oh, how badly he had been used.
Then it would all begin over again.
Finally he came to a resolution, the daring of which (such is the force of habit) half frightened him, while it made his eyes in their turn bright and shining with pleasure.