“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.