SCENE II

_The orchard of San Miguel the following evening at nine o’clock. Near the postern stands DON MANUEL DE LARA, motionless, his arms folded, his cloak drawn round the lower part of his face. Towards him hurries SISTER ASSUMCION._

_Sister Assumcion_: Good evening, friar _trovar_ ... and can you not come forward to meet me? I can tell you, sir, it needed all Trotaconventos’s eloquence to send me to the tryst. Never before has her pleading been so honeyed.... Why....

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I am not the _trovar_, lady.

_Sister Assumcion_ (_starting back_): Holy saints defend me! Who, then, are you?... And yet your voice....

_Don Manuel de Lara_: But I bear a message to you from the _trovar_.

_Sister Assumcion_ (_sharply_): Well?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: His words were these: ‘Tell her the dead grudge us our joys.’

_Sister Assumcion_: What meant he?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I am a messenger, not a reader of riddles.

_Sister Assumcion_ (_crossing herself_): Strange words! Where was it that you met him?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: In the streets of Seville ... at night.

_Sister Assumcion_: And what was he doing?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: He was standing by a niche in which was an image of Our Lady with a lamp burning before it, and by its light he was examining a key. And he was laughing.

_Sister Assumcion_: Well?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: That is all.

_Sister Assumcion_: All? (_Shrilly_): Who are you? (_Plucks at his cloak which he allows to fall._)

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Well, and are you any the wiser?

_Sister Assumcion_: No, your face is unknown to me.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: And yours to me.

_Sister Assumcion_: And yet, your voice ... by Our Lady, you are an ominous, louring man. And this strange tale of the _trovar_ ... why am I to credit it?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Here is the key.

_Sister Assumcion_: And where is he?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: That I cannot say.

_Sister Assumcion_: Did he look sick?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: No, in the very bloom of health.

_Sister Assumcion_: And he was standing under a shrine laughing, and you approached, and he said, “Tell her the dead grudge us our joys”.... Pooh! It rings like a foolish ballad.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: It is true nevertheless.

_Sister Assumcion_: And how came you by the key?

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_nonchalantly_): The key? (_holding it out in front of him and smiling teasingly_). It is delicately wrought.

_Sister Assumcion_ (_stamping_): A madman!

_Don Manuel de Lara_: So many have said. But now, in that I have borne a message to you, will you return the grace and bear one for me? I have a kinswoman in this sisterhood and I would fain speak with her.

_Sister Assumcion_ (_insolently_): Have you in truth? We have no demon’s kinswomen here ... well, and what is her name?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Sister Pilar.

_Sister Assumcion_: Aye, _she_ might be ... sprung from the same still-born, white-blooded grandame.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Ah! (_with suppressed eagerness_). You know Sister Pilar well?

_Sister Assumcion_ (_with a short laugh_): Aye, that I do.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: And ... is ... is she well?

_Sister Assumcion_: She is never ailing.

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_absently_): Never ailing. You ... you know her well?

_Sister Assumcion_: Without doubt, a madman! I have told you that I know her but too well.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: On what does her talk turn?

_Sister Assumcion_: For the most part on our shortcomings. But her words are few.

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_pulling himself together_): Well, you would put me much in your debt if you would carry her this letter. It bears my credentials as her kinsman. I would speak with her at once, as I bear weighty news for her from her home.

_Sister Assumcion_: And why could you not come knocking at the porter’s lodge, as others do, and at some hour, too, before Compline, when ends the day of a religious?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: As to the porter’s lodge, I have my own key. And the news, I tell you, will not keep till morning. Handle that letter gingerly; it bears the king’s seal.

_Sister Assumcion_ (_awed_): Don Pedro’s?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Aye.

_Sister Assumcion_: Well ... as you will. I’ll take your message. Good-night ... Sir demon; are you not of Hell’s chivalry?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: No.

_SISTER ASSUMCION shrugs her shoulders, looks at him quizzically, and exit. A few minutes elapse, during which DON MANUEL stands motionless; then SISTER PILAR enters; she gives a slight bow and waits._

_Don Manuel de Lara_: You are Sister Pilar?

_Sister Pilar_: Yes.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: In the world the Lady Maria Guzman y Perez?

_Sister Pilar_: Yes.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I am Don Pablo de Guzman, your father’s cousin’s son.

_Sister Pilar_ (_with interest_): Ah! I have heard my father speak of yours.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: You have not lately, I think, visited your home?

_Sister Pilar_: Not since I was professed.... _I_ obey the bull of Pope Boniface, that nuns should keep their cloister.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Your sister, Violante, has lately been wed.

_Sister Pilar_ (_eagerly_): Little Violante? She was but a child when I took the black veil. Whom has she wedded?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Er ... er ... a comrade in arms of mine. A knight of Old Castille ... one Don Manuel de Lara.

_Sister Pilar_: And what manner of man is he? I should wish little Violante to be happy.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: He passes for a brave soldier. He has brought her the skulls of many Moors. She has filled them with earth and planted them with bulbs. Daffodils grow out of their eyes and nose.

_Sister Pilar_: A strange device!

_Don Manuel de Lara_: ’Twas Don Manuel showed her it; such are the whimsies of Old Castille. In that country we like to play with death.

_Sister Pilar_: Yet ... yet is it not a toy.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: We rarely play with love.

_Sister Pilar_: No.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: No.

_Sister Pilar_: I would fain learn more of this knight. He loves my sister?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Ah! yes. His soul snatched the torch of love from his body, then gave it back again, then again snatched it. She is all twined round with his dreams; she smiles at him with his mother’s eyes; she is Belerma the Fair and Doña Alda of his childhood’s ballads. She is a fair ship charged with spices, she is all the flowers that have blossomed since the Third Day of the Creation, she is the bread not made with wheat, she ... she ... she is a key, like this one (_holding up the key_), but wrought in silver and ivory.

_Sister Pilar_: A key? Strange! (_smiling a little_). And what is he to her?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: He to her? I know not ... perhaps also a key.

(_Pause._)

_Sister Pilar_: So you know my home? You have heard our slaves crooning Moorish melodies from their quarters on moonlight nights, perchance you have handled my father’s chessmen and the Portuguese pennon he won from a French count at Tables ... oh! he was so proud of that pennon! How is the Cid?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: The Cid? His bones still moulder in Cardeña.

_Sister Pilar_: No, no, my father’s greyhound ... the one that has one eye blue and the other brown.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Ah! He still sleeps by day and bays at the moon o’ nights.

_Sister Pilar_: Oh! And how tall has my oak grown now?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Your oak?

_Sister Pilar_: Ah, surely they cannot have forgot to show it you! It was the height of a daffodil when I took the veil. When we were children, you know, we were told an _exemplum_ of a wise Moor who planted trees that under their shade his children’s children might call him blessed, so we—Sancho and Rodrigo and little Violante and me—we took acorns from the pigs’ trough and planted them beyond the orchard, near my mother’s bed of gillyflowers, and mine was the only one that sent forth shoots. Oh! And the bush of Granada roses ... they must have shown you _them_?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: To be sure! They are still fragrant.

_Sister Pilar_: You know, they were planted from seeds my grandsire got in the Alhambra when he was jousting in Granada. My father was wont to call them his harem of Moorish beauties, and there was a nightingale that would serenade them every evening from the Judas tree that shadows them. It was always to them he sang, he cared not a jot for the other roses in the garden.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: The rose-tree died of blight and the nightingale of a broken heart the year you took the veil.

_Sister Pilar_: You are jesting!

_He smiles, and she gives a little smile back at him._

_Don Manuel de Lara_: And so it is of roses and nightingales that you ask tidings, and not of mother and father or brothers! Well, it is always thus with exiles. When I have lain fevered with my wounds very far from Old Castille, it has been for the river that flows at the foot of our orchard I have yearned, or for the green _Vega_ dotted with brown villages and stretching away towards the _Sierra_.

_Sister Pilar_: I am not an exile.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: An exile is one who is far from home.

_Sister Pilar_: This is my home.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: And do you never yearn for your other one?

_Sister Pilar_: My _other_ one? Ah, yes!

_Don Manuel de Lara_: By that you mean Paradise?

_Sister Pilar_: Yes.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: And so you long for Paradise?

_Sister Pilar_: With a great longing.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I sometimes _dream_ of Paradise.

_Sister Pilar_: And how does it show in your dreams?

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_smiling a little_): I fear it is mightily like what the _trovares_—_not_ the monks—tell us of hell.

_Sister Pilar_ (_severely_): Then it must be a dream sent you by a fiend of the Moorish Paradise, which is indeed hell.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: That may be. And how does it show in _your_ dreams?

_Sister Pilar_: A great, cool, columned, empty hall, and I feel at once small and vast and shod with the wind. And all the while I am aware that the coolness and vastness and spaciousness of the hall and my body’s lightness is because there is no sin.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: But what can you know of sin in a nunnery?

_SISTER PILAR looks at him suspiciously, but his expression remains impenetrable._

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Well?

_Sister Pilar_: You must know ... ’tis the scandal of Christendom ... the empty vows of the religious. Yet when all’s said, ’tis better here than out in the world; we _do_ live under rule, and mark the day by singing the Hours (_gazing in front of her as if at some vision_). Just over there, perhaps across that hill, or round that bend of the road, a cool, rain-washed world, trees, oxen, men, women, children, thin and transparent, as if made of crystal.... I always held I would suddenly come upon it. (_Passionately_) Oh, I am so weary of the glare and dust of sin! Everything is heavy and savourless and confined.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Always?

_Sister Pilar_: Yes ... except when I eat Christ in the Eucharist.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: And then?

_Sister Pilar_: Then there is vastness and peace.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: That must be a nun’s communion. When I eat Our Lord I am filled with a great pity for His sufferings on Calvary which the Mass commemorates. There have been times when having eaten Him on the field of battle, my comrades and I, the tears have rained down our cheeks, and from our pity has sprung an exceeding great rage against the infidel dogs who deny His divinity, and in that day’s battle it goes ill with them. And when I eat Him in times of peace, I am filled with a longing to fall upon the Morería, a sword in one hand, a burning brand in the other.

(_Pause._)

_Sister Pilar_: It is already very late ... for nuns. What is the weighty news you bring me?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Why, the marriage of your sister Violante!

_Sister Pilar_ (_coldly_): And was it for that I was dragged from the dorter?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I had sworn to acquaint you with the news ... and to-morrow I leave Seville.

_Sister Pilar_ (_relenting_): And you are well acquainted with Don Manuel de Lara?

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_gives a start_): Don Manuel de Lara? Ah, yes ... we are of the same country and the same age. We were suckled by one foster-mother, we yawned over one Latin primer, and gloated over the same tales of chivalry. We learned to ride the same horse, to fly the same hawk; we were dubbed knight by the same stroke of the sword—we love the same lady.

_Sister Pilar_ (_amazed_): _You_ love my sister Violante?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes, I love your sister Violante ... and your mother that carried you in her womb, and your father that begat you. (_Violently_) By the rood, I am sick of mummery! _I_ am Don Manuel de Lara.

_Sister Pilar_: You?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes, I——

_Sister Pilar_: Then you are not the son of my father’s cousin?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: No.

_Sister Pilar_: I ... I am all dumbfounded ... I ...

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I will make it clear. On Tuesday night I heard your talk with Sister Assumcion.

_Sister Pilar_ (_in horror_): Oh!...

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I was the man behind the wall whom you justly named the worst kind of would-be adulterer, and....

_Sister Pilar_: I have no further words for Sister Assumcion’s lover.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: _I_ am not Sister Assumcion’s lover. The moon has already set and risen, the sun risen and set on his dead body.

_Sister Pilar_ (_haughtily_): I am not an old peasant woman that you should seek to please me with riddles.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I will read you the riddle. Some weeks ago I had business—sent from the Alcazar on a matter pertaining to some herbs—with that old hag Trotaconventos. And through what motive I cannot say, she waxed exceeding eloquent on the charms of Sister Assumcion. We are taught in the Catechism that the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears, are gates by which either fiends or angels may enter.... Well, her words entered my ears and set fire to a great, dry heap of old dreams, old memories, old hopes ... (strange! these are the _trovar’s_ words!) piled high on my heart. I became a flame.... You are of the South, you have never seen a fire consuming a sun-parched _vega_ in the North. Well, a fire must work its will, and, devouring all that blocks its path—flowers, towers, men—drive forward to its secret bourne. Who knows the bourne of fire? I obtained speech with Sister Assumcion; it takes many waters to quench a great fire, but the wind can alter its course. I heard a voice and strange, passionate words ... the course of the fire was altered, but still it drives on, still it consumes.

_Sister Pilar_ (_in a small, cold voice_): Well?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Well? And is it well? My God! Well, a _trovar_ from France who had entered your convent disguised as a friar obtained from Trotaconventos this key, which I likewise desired, first because it opens this postern, secondly because ... toys are apt to take for me a vast significance and swell out with all the potencies of my happiness in this world, my salvation in the next, and thus it happened with this key; the fire rushed on, I killed the _trovar_ and took the key!

_Sister Pilar_ (_horror-stricken_): You _killed_ him?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes ... and would have killed a thousand such for the key ... a low, French _jongleur_! The world is all the better for his loss. The dog! Daring to think he could seduce the nuns of Spain!

_Sister Pilar_: Well?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: The rest is told in few words. My madness over (for that night I was mad) the key in my hands, counsel returned to me, and showed me that it was not only through the key I could win to your convent ... it is dreams that open only to this key; strange dreams I only know in fragments ... and I minded me of an _exemplum_ told by the king Don Sancho, in his book, of a knight that craved to talk with a nun, and to affect the same, feigned to be her kinsman. The night I was the other side this wall and you were taunting Sister Assumcion, you named yourself a Guzman whose mother was a Perez. I had but to go to a herald and learn from him all the particulars pertaining to the family of Perez y Guzman.

_Sister Pilar_: You wished to have speech with me?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes.

_Sister Pilar_: Why?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: I have already said that no one knows the bourne of fire.

_Sister Pilar_ (_scornfully_): The bourne of fire! The bourne rather of ... I’ll not soil my lips with the word. Let me reduce your “fires,” and “lyres,” and “moons” to plain, cold words; having wearied of Sister Assumcion, you thought you’d sample another nun—one maybe taking a greater stretch of arm to reach; like children with figs—a bite out of one, then flung away, then scrambling for another on a higher branch, that in its turn it, too, may be bitten and thrown. Or, maybe, Sister Assumcion found the _trovar_ more to her taste than you ... yes, I have it! _I_ am to bring a little balm to Sister Assumcion’s discarded lover!

_Don Manuel de Lara_ (_eagerly_): Oh, lady, very light of ... lady, it is not so. Maybe thus it shows, but in your heart of hearts you know right well it is not so. I am a grievous sinner, but my soul is not light nor is my heart shallow ... and I think already you know ’tis so. Listen; I could have continued feigning to be your kinsman and thus I could have come again to speak with you, and all would have gone well; but your presence gave me a loathing of my deceit, so I stripped me of my lies and stand naked at your mercy. As to Sister Assumcion ... the old hag’s words, when she spoke of her, mated with my dreams and engendered _you_ in my heart, yes, _you_; and I had but to hear the other’s voice and hearken to her words to know that I had been duped and that she was not you. I swear by God Almighty, by the duty I owe to my liege-lord, by my order of chivalry, that I speak the truth.

_Sister Pilar_: Well, suppose it true, what then?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: What then? I have burned my boats and I shall go ... where? And you will to your dorter and be summoned by the cock to matins, and it will all be as a dream (_in a voice of agony_). No! No! By all the height and depth of God’s mercy it cannot be thus! The stars have never said that of all men I should be the most miserable. Can you see no pattern traced behind all this? Sin? Aye, sin.... But I verily believe that God loves sinners. But why do I speak of sin? You say sin is everywhere; tell me, do you see sin’s shadow lying between us two to-night? Speak! You do not answer. Who knows? It may be that for the first time we have stumbled on the track that leads to Paradise. Angels are abroad ... fiends, too, it may be ... but I am not a light man. _Ex utero ante luciferum amavi te_ ... ’tis not thus the words run, but they came.

_Sister Pilar_: You speak wildly. What do you want of me?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: What do I want?... _Magna opera Domini_ ... why does the psalter run in my head?... Great are the works of the Lord ... the sun is a great work, but so is shade from the sun; and the moon is a great work, giving coolness and dreams, and air to breathe is a great work, and so is water to lave our wounds and slake our throats ... I believe all the works of the Lord are found in you.... I could ... oh, God!... Where? Lady, remember I have the key, and every evening at sundown I shall be here ... waiting. It is a vow.

_SISTER PILAR slowly moves away._

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Lady Maria! Lady Maria!

_Sister Pilar_ (_stopping_): She is dead. Do you speak to Sister Pilar?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Yes, that is she, Sister Pilar. Listen: receive absolution; communicate; be very instant in prayer; make deep obeisance to the images of Our Lady. Say many Paters and Aves, and through the watches of the night, pray for the dead.

_Sister Pilar_ (_in a frightened voice_): For the dead?

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Aye, the dead ... that defend virginity.

_Sister Pilar_ (_very coldly_): All this has ever been my custom, as a nun, without your admonition.

_Don Manuel de Lara_: Good-night.

(_Pause._)

_Sister Pilar_ (_almost inaudibly_): Good-night.