Sister Assumcion (frightened): What ails the man? ... but ... Trotaconventos ... I had not thought ... ’tis all so strange....
Don Manuel de Lara (solemnly): Why did you come to the postern to-night, Sister Assumcion?
Sister Assumcion (angrily): Why did I come? A pretty question! I came because of the exceeding importunities of Trotaconventos, who said you lay sick for love of me.
Don Manuel de Lara (low, sternly): You are the bride of Christ. Is your profession a light thing?
Sister Assumcion (shrilly): Profession? Much wish I had to be professed! I do not know who my mother was nor who my father. I was reared by the priest of a little village near the Moorish frontier. He was good-natured enough so long as the parishioners were regular with their capons and sucking-pigs laid on the altar for the souls of the dead, but all he cared for was sport with his greyhound and ferret, and they said he hadn’t enough Latin to say the Consecration aright, and that the souls of his parishioners were in dire peril through his tongue tripping and stumbling over the office of Baptism, so ’twas little respect for religion that I learned in his house. And so little did I dream of being professed a nun that though the fear of the Moors lay black over the village, and the other maids could not go to fill their pitchers at the well or take the goatherds their midday bread and garlic without their hearts trembling like a bird, yet as to me I never tired of hearing the tale of the Infanta Proserpine, who, as she was weaving garlands in her father’s garden, was stolen by the Moorish king, Pluton; and I would pray, yes, pray at the shrine of Our Lady on the hill to lull my guardian-angel asleep and sheath his sword, and on that very day to send a fine Moorish knight in a crimson marlota and armour glittering in the sun, clattering down the bridle-path to carry me off to Granada, where, if it had meant a life of ease and pleasure, I would gladly have bowed down before the gold and marble Mahound.
Don Manuel de Lara: How came you, then, to take the veil?
Sister Assumcion (bitterly): Through no choice of my own. When I was twelve, the priest said he had law business in Seville, and asked me if I’d like to go with him. If I’d like to go with him! It was my dream to see Seville, and I had made in my fancy a silly, simple picture—a town which was always a great fair, stall upon stall of bright, glittering merchandise, and laughter and merriment, and tumblers and dancers, threaded with a blue river upon which ships with silken sails and figureheads of heathen gods, laden with lords and ladies, and painted birds that talked, were ever sailing up and down, and all small and very brightly coloured, like the pictures in a merry lewd book of fables by an old Spanish trovar, Ovid, for which my priest cared more than for his breviary. And oh, the adventures that were to wait me there! Well, we set out, I riding behind him on his mule ... if I shut my eyes it all comes back as if it were but yesterday.... I jolted and sore and squeamish from my nearness to him, as his linen was as foul as were the corporals in his Church ... then the band of merchants and their varlets we travelled with for greater safety on the road.... It was bicker, bicker all the time between them and my priest ... each time we came to a bridge it was, “Nay, sir priest, we’ll not let you across for you and your cloth pay naught to their building and upkeep,” and then.... Oh, ’twas a tedious journey, and took the heart out of me. Well, we reached Seville towards dusk ... a close, frowning, dirty town, in truth, nought but a Morisco settlement such as we had at home—the houses all blank and grim like dead faces, and oh! the stink of dogs’ corpses! And not a soul to be seen for fear of the Guzmans and the Ponces.... And yet I’d catch the whiff of orange-flowers across the walls, and I heard a voice singing the ballad, Count Arnaldo, to the lute ... ’tis strange, these two things, whiffs of orange-flower at night and the Count Arnaldo ... it has ever been the same with me, they turn the years to come to music and perfume ... or, rather, ’tis as if the years had come and gone, and already I was old and dreaming them back again. Well, albeit like a pious little maid, I had said a Pater and Ave for the parents of St. Julian that he might send me a good lodging, ’twas to the house of Trotaconventos the priest took me that night, and it seemed to me indeed an evil house and she a witch, and I never closed my eyes all night. Next morning she brought me here, and after that night, what with its cool dorter and frater, and its patio and gardens, it seemed like the castle of Rocafrida—the fairy houses in ballads; and whether I would or not I became a novice ... a dowerless novice without clothes or furniture, and never a coin even to give the servants at Christmas ... and then ... what would you? Once a novice ’tis wellnigh impossible to ’scape the black veil (her tone once more bantering). And that’s the end of the story, and may the good things that come be for all the shire. Did the daughters of the Moors and Jews tell you such prosy tales?
(Pause.)
Don Manuel de Lara: You have not yet told me why you came to the postern to-night.
Sister Assumcion (in a voice where archness tries to conceal embarrassment): Why, you must be one of the monkish knights of Santiago! I feel like a penitent in the Confessional ... mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, aha! aha!