3
Towards the end of February Teresa heard excited voices coming from the Doña’s morning-room. She went in and found the Doña sitting on the sofa with a white face and blazing eyes, her father nervously shifting the ornaments on the chimneypiece, and Concha standing in the middle of the room and looking as obstinate as Caroline the donkey.
“Teresa!” the Doña said in a very quiet voice, “Concha tells us she is engaged to Captain Dundas.”
But of course!... had not Parker said that there was “the marriage likeness” between them—“both with such lovely blue eyes?”
“And he has written to your father—we have just received this letter,” and the Doña handed it to her: “From the letter and from her we learn that Captain Dundas has perverted her. She is going to become a Protestant.”
There was a pause; Concha’s face did not move a muscle.
“The reason why she is going to do this is that Captain Dundas would be disinherited by his uncle if he married a Catholic. What do you think of this conduct, Teresa?”
Concha looked at her defiantly.
“I don’t ... I ... if Concha doesn’t believe in it all, I don’t see why she should sacrifice her happiness to something she doesn’t believe in,” she found herself saying.
Concha’s face relaxed for a second, and she flashed her a look of gratitude.
“Teresa!” cried the Doña, and her voice was inexpressibly reproachful.
Dick turned round from the chimneypiece: “Teresa’s quite right,” he said; “upon my soul, it would be madness, as she says, to sacrifice one’s happiness for ... for that sort of thing.”
“Dick!”
And he turned from the cold severity of the Doña’s voice and eye to a re-examination of the ornaments.
As to Teresa, though his words had been but an echo and corroboration of her own, she was unreasonable enough to be shocked by them; coming, as they did, from a descendant of the men who had witnessed the magnificent gesture with which Ridley and Latimer had lit a candle in England.
“Well, Teresa, as you think the same as Concha ... I don’t know what I have done.... I seem to have failed very much as a mother. It must be my own fault,” and she laughed bitterly.
Concha’s face softened: “Doña!” she said appealingly.
“Concha! Are you really going to do this terrible thing?”
“I must ... it’s what Teresa said ... I mean ... it would be so mad not to!”
“I see—it would be mad not to sell Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Well, in that case, there is nothing more to be said ... and you have your father and sister as supporters,” and again she laughed bitterly.
Concha’s face again hardened; and, with a shrug, she left the room.
There was silence for a few seconds, and Teresa glanced mechanically at the letter she held in her hand: “... won’t think it frightful cheek ... go rather gently while I’m at the Staff College ... my uncle ... Drumsheugh ... allowance ... will try so hard to make Concha happy ... my uncle ... Drumsheugh ... hope Mrs. Lane won’t mind frightfully ... the Scottish Episcopal Church ... very high, it doesn’t acknowledge the Pope, that’s the only difference.”
Suddenly the Doña began to sob convulsively: “She ... is ... my child, my baby! Oh, none of you understand ... none of you understand! It’s my fault ... I have sinned ... I ought never to have married a Protestant. My Pepa ... my poor Pepa ... she knows now ... she would stop it if she could. Oh, what have I done?”
Teresa kneeled down beside her, and took one of her cold hands in hers; she herself was cold and trembling—she had only once before, at Pepa’s death, seen her mother break down.
Dick came to her other side, and gently stroked her hair: “My dear, you’ve nothing to blame yourself for,” he said, “and there are really lots of good Protestants, you know. And I’ve met some very broad-minded Roman Catholics, too, who took a ... a ... sensible view of it all. These Spanish priests are apt....”
“Spanish priests!” she cried, sitting up in her chair and turning blazing eyes upon him, “what do you know of Spanish priests? You, an elderly Don Juan Tenorio!”
Dick flushed: “Well, I have heard you know ... those priests of yours aren’t all so mighty immaculate,” he said sullenly.
“Dick! How—dare—you?” and having first frozen him with her stare, she got up and left the room.
Dick turned to Teresa: “For heaven’s sake,” he said, “do make your mother see that Protestants are Christians too, that they aren’t all blackguards.”
“It would be no good—that’s really got nothing to do with it,” said Teresa wearily.
“Nothing to do with it? Oh, well—you’re all too deep for me. Anyhow, it’s all a most awful storm in a teacup, and the thing that really makes her so angry is that she knows perfectly well she can do nothing to prevent it. Well, do go up to her now.... I daren’t show my face within a mile ... get her some eau-de-Cologne or something. ’Snice! ’Snice, old man! Come along then, and look at the crocuses,” and, followed by ’Snice, he went through the French window into the garden.
Yes; her father had been partly right—a very bitter element in it all was that the passionate dominant Doña could do nothing to prevent the creatures of her body from managing their lives in their own way. What help was it that behind her stood the convictions of the multitudinous dead, the “bishops, priests, deacons, sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, lectors, porters, confessors, virgins, widows, and all the holy people of God?” She and they were powerless to arrest the incoming tide of life; she had identified herself with the dead—with what was old, crazy, and impotent, and, therefore, she was pre-doomed to failure.
Teresa had a sudden vision of the sinful couch (according to the Doña’s views) of Concha and Rory, infested by the dead: “I say, Concha, what a frightful bore! They ought to have given us a mosquito-net.” “Oh Lord! Well, never mind—I’m simply dropping with sleep.” And so to bed, comfortably mattressed by the shrouds of the “holy people of God.”
She went up and tried the Doña’s door, but found it locked. She felt that she ought next to go to Concha, upon whom, she told herself, all this was very hard—that she, who had merely set out upon the flowery path that had been made by the feet of myriads and myriads of other sane and happy people since the world began, should have her joy dimmed, her laughter arrested, by ghosts and other peoples’ delusions. But, though she told herself this, she could not feel any real pity; her heart was as cold as ice.
However, she went to Concha’s room, and found her sitting at her desk writing a letter—probably a long angry one to that other suffering sage, Elfrida Penn.
“Poor old Concha!” she said, “I’m sorry it should be like this for you.”
Concha—puffed up with the sense of being a symbol of a whole generation—scowled angrily: “Oh, it’s all too fantastic! Thank the Lord I’ll soon be out of all this!”
At times there was something both dour and ungracious about Concha—a complete identification of herself with the unbecoming rôles she chose to act.
Teresa found herself wondering if, after all, she herself had not more justification with regard to her than recently she had come to fear.