Act 1 — SCENE III

Nine o’clock in the evening of the same day. The convent’s orange orchard. From the chapel is wafted the voices of the nuns singing Compline. A horse whinnies from the other side of the orchard wall.

Don Manuel de Lara (who all through this scene is at the other side of the wall and hence invisible): Whist! Muza! Whist, my beauty! (sings):

Sister Assumcion enters as he sings and walks hurriedly towards the wall.

Sister Assumcion (sings):

Don Manuel de Lara (quickly and tonelessly, as if repeating a lesson): Oh, disembodied voice! Like the cuckoo’s, you tell of enamelled meads watered by fertile streams and of a myriad small hidden beauties that in woods and mountains the spring keeps sheltered from men’s eyes.

Sister Assumcion (laughing softly): Sir knight, howbeit I have never till this moment heard your voice, yet I can tell ’tis not an instrument tuned to these words.

Don Manuel de Lara: A pox on trovares and clerks, and the French Courts of Love.... I’ll trust to the union of the moon and my own hot blood to find me words!

Sister Assumcion (mockingly): The moon’s a cold dead mare, is your blood a lusty enough stallion to beget ought on her?

Don Manuel de Lara (with an impatient exclamation): I’ve not come to weave fantastic talk like serenading Moors. All I would say can be said in the Old Christians’ Castilian.

Sister Assumcion: Well, sir knight, speak to me then in Castilian.

(Pause.)

Don Manuel de Lara (slowly and deliberately): So you have come to the tryst.

Sister Assumcion: So it would seem.

(Pause.)

Don Manuel de Lara (as if having come to a sudden resolution): Listen, lady. I am no carpet knight, dubbed with a jester’s bladder at a rere-supper of infantas. I won my spurs when I was fourteen at the Battle of Salado. Since then I have been in sieges and skirmishes and night-alarms, enough to dint ten coats of mail. And because there is great merit in fighting the Moors, I have permitted myself to sin lustily. I have even lain with the daughters of Moors and Jews, for which I went on foot to Compostella and did sore penance, for it is a heavy sin, and the one that brought in days gone by the flood upon the earth. But never have I sinned with the wife or daughter or kinswoman of my over-lord, or with one of the brides of Christ. I am from Old Castille, and I cannot forget my immortal soul. But I verily believe that old witch Trotaconventos has laid a spell upon me; for she has so inflamed my blood with her talk of your eyes, your lashes, your small white teeth, your scarlet lips and gums, your breasts, your flanks, your ankles ... oh, I know well the tune to which old bawds trumpet their wares; and man is so fashioned as to be swayed by certain words that act on him like charms—such as “breasts,” “hips,” “lips”—and must as surely burn at the naming of them as a hound must prick his ears and bay at the sound of a distant horn, but it is but with a small, wavering flame, soon quenched, with a “no, no, gutter-crone, none of your scurvy, worm-eaten goods for me!” But when the old witch talked of you, ’twas with the honeyed tongue of Pandar himself, the same that stole from the good Knight, Troilus, all manliness and pride of arms. And she has strangely stirred my dreams ... they are ever of scaling towers and mining walls; but, although dreaming, I know well the towers are not of stone, nor the mines dug in earth ... lady ... I think I am sick ... I——

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!

Don Manuel de Lara (very solemnly): I will know. Did that old witch in mandragora or henbane, or whatever be the hellish filters that hold the poison of love, pour me hurtling and burning through your veins as you were poured through mine?

Sister Assumcion: Jesus!... I ... she did indeed please my fancy with the picture that she drew of you ... but come, sir knight! You forget I have not yet seen your face, much less....

Don Manuel de Lara (slowly): So on a cold stomach, through caprice and a little accidia you were ready to forfeit eternal bliss and ... I will not mince my words ... make Our Lord Jesus Christ a cuckold?

Sister Assumcion: Well, of all the strange talk! I vow, Sir Knight, it is as if you blamed me for coming to the tryst. Have you forgotten how for weeks you did importune that old witch with prayers and vows and tears and groans that she should at least contrive I should hold speech with you to give you a little ease of your great torment? And what’s more, ’tis full six weeks since you began plaguing me by proxy; at least, I have not failed in coyness.

Don Manuel de Lara: True, lady, I ask your pardon. Why should I blame you for my dreams? (half to himself) a phantom fire laying waste a land of ghosts and shadows ... then a little wind wafting the smell of earthly things ... wet flowers and woods ... its wings dropping wholesome rain and lo! the fantastic flames with dying hisses vanish in the smoke that kindled them.... Lips? Lashes? Haunches? I spoke foolishly; they are not enough. How can I tell my dreams? (his voice grows wild). Lips straining towards lips against the pulling back of all the hosts of Heaven ... a sin so grave as to be own sister to virtue ... oh! sweetness coming out of horror ... once my horse’s hoofs crushed a seven years’ old Moorish maid ... ooh!

During the last words, Sister Pilar has crept up unperceived.

Sister Pilar: Sister, I missed you at Compline.

Sister Assumcion: Indeed! And in the interval have you been made prioress or sub-prioress?

Sister Pilar: Sister Assumcion, this is not the time for idle taunts. I cannot say I love you, and in this I know I err, for no religious house can flourish except Sisters Charity, Meekness, and Peace are professed among its nuns. But I came for the honour of this house.... God knows its scutcheon is blotted enough ... have you forgotten Sister Isabel?... believe me I must speak; it would go ill with me were I to see a sister take horse for hell and not catch hold of the bridle, nay, fling my body underneath the hoofs, if that could stop the progress.

Sister Assumcion: And what is all this tedious prose? Because, forsooth, feeling faint at Compline, I crept out to take the evening air.

Sister Pilar: You lie, sister. Think you I am deaf? As I drew near a man’s voice reached me from the other side of the wall. (Raising her voice.) Most impious of all would-be adulterers, know that your banns will be forbidden by the myriad voices of the Church Militant, the Church Triumphant, and the Church in Torment. For she (and all nuns do so), who through the watches of the night prays for the dead, raises up a ghostly bodyguard to fight for her virginity. Beware of the dead! They hedge this sister round.

Sister Assumcion (shrilly): You canting, white-lipped, sneering witch! You whose breasts are no bigger than a maid of twelve! You ... you ... this talk comes ill from you ... do you think me blind? Oh, Sister Vanity, what of your veil drawn down so modestly to your eyes in frater or in chapter, but when there are lay visitors in the parlour, or even Don Jaime gossiping in the patio, have I not seen that same veil creep up and up, till it reveals the broad, white brow? Oh, and the smile hoarded like a miser’s gold that when at last it is disclosed all may the more marvel at the treasure of small, white teeth! Oh, swan who loves solitude but who, of all birds, is the most swayed by the music of ... mendicant friars!

Sister Pilar: Silence!

Sister Assumcion: Aha! That shaft went home! What of the Deadly Sins grimacing behind the masks of the virtues? Why do you hate me so? Well, I will tell you. ’Tis the work of our old friend of the Catechism—Envy, the jaundiced, sour-breathed Don. Remember, Sister Pilar: Thou shalt not envy thy sister’s flanks, nor her merry tongue, nor her red lips, nor any of her body’s members. Over my shoulder to-day, I saw the look with which you followed the friar and me.

Sister Pilar (in a voice choked with passion): Silence! you peasant’s bastard! You who have crept into a house of high born ladies and made it stink with as rank a smell as though a goat had laid down among Don Pedro’s Arab mares. Poor mummer! From a little, red-cheeked, round-eyed peasant girl, I have seen you moulding yourself to the pattern of our high-born visitors—from one the shrill laugh, from another the eyes blackened with kohl, from a third the speech flowery from Amadis and other profane books—but all the civet and musk your fancy pours on your image of yourself cannot drown the peasant’s garlic. You flatter yourself, Sister Assumcion; I, a Guzman, whose mother was a Perez, and grandame a Padilla, how could I for a second envy you?

Sister Assumcion (laughing): But peasant’s blood can show red in the lips and gums, and a bastard’s breasts can be as full and firm, her limbs as long and slender as those of a Guzman or a Padilla. Your rage betrays you, Sister Pilar. I bid you good-night.

Exit. (Pause.)

Sister Pilar: My God! Envy! It has a sour smell. And rage and pride—two other deadly sins whose smell is ranker than that of any peasant. (Shrilly) Sloth! Avarice! Gluttony! Lust! Why do you linger? Your brothers wait for you to begin the feast.

Sinks on her knees.

Oh, heavenly advocate! Sweet Virgin of compassion, by your seven joys and seven sorrows I beseech you to intercede for me. I have sinned, I have sinned, my soul has become loathsome to me. Oh, Blessed Virgin, a boon, a boon! That either by day or in the watches of the night, though it be but for a second of time I may behold the woof of things without the warp of sin ... a still, quiet, awful world, and all the winds asleep.

From beyond the wall comes a small whinny, then the jingle of spurs and the sound of departing hoofs. Sister Pilar starts violently.