Act 3 — SCENE I

A week later. The Chapel of the Convent of San Miguel. Sister Assumcion kneels in the Confessional, where Jaime Rodriguez is receiving penitents.

Sister Assumcion: I ask your blessing, father. I confess to Almighty God, and to you, father....

Jaime Rodriguez: Well, daughter—Ten Commandments, Seven Deadly Sins. What of the Second Commandment, which we break whensoever we follow after vanities?

Sister Assumcion: Yes, father. I have not foregone blackening my eyes with kohl ... and I have procured me a crimson scarf the dye of which comes off on the lips ... and ... the pittance I got at Easter I have expended upon perfumes.

Jaime Rodriguez: Ever the same tale, daughter! As I have told you many a time before, civet and musk make the angels hold their noses, as though they were passing an open grave, and a painted woman makes them turn aside their eyes; but ’tis God Himself that turns away His eyes when the painted woman is a nun. The Second Commandment is ever a stumbling-block to you, daughter, and so is the Sixth, for in God’s sight he who commits the deadly sin of Rage breaks that commandment; admit, daughter!

Sister Assumcion: Yes, father; during the singing of None, I did loudly rate Sister Ines and boxed her ears.

Jaime Rodriguez: Shame on you, daughter! Why did you thus?

Sister Assumcion: Because she had spewed out on my seat the sage she had been chewing to clean her teeth after dinner, and, unwittingly, I sat on it.

Jaime Rodriguez: And do you not know that a stained habit is less ungracious in the eyes of God than a soul stained with rage against a sister and with irreverence of His holy service?

Sister Assumcion: Yes, father.

Jaime Rodriguez: Well, for your concupiscence, rage, and unmannerliness: seven penitential psalms with the Litany on Fridays, and a fare of bread and water on the Fridays of this month. There still remains the Tenth Commandment and the deadly sin of Envy; I mind me in the past you have been guilty of Envy ... towards more virtuous and richer sisters.

Silence.

Jaime Rodriguez (sternly): Daughter, admit!

Sister Assumcion: Father, I....

Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, admit!

Sister Assumcion: It may be ... a little ... Sister Pilar.

Jaime Rodriguez: Aha! Envious of Sister Pilar! And wherein did you envy her?

Silence.

Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, admit!

Sister Assumcion: I have envied her, father, but ... the matter touches her more than me.

Jaime Rodriguez: You have envied her. Envy is a deadly sin; if I’m to give you Absolution I must know more of the matter.

Sister Assumcion: I have envied her in that ... well, in that she was a Guzman ... and ... and has a room to herself, and a handsome dowry....

Jaime Rodriguez: Doubtless you envy her for these things; but ... I seem to detect a particular behind these generals. Touching what particular matter during these past days have you envied Sister Pilar?

Silence.

Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, admit!

Sister Assumcion: Oh, father ... ’tis she that is involved ... I....

Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, admit!

Sister Assumcion: There was a man ... it was Trotaconventos ... all he asked was a few words with me, no more ... nothing ... nothing unseemly passed between us ... and then he flouted me ... and then he came bearing a letter and saying he was a kinsman of Sister Pilar.

Jaime Rodriguez: Come, daughter, your confession is like a peasant’s tale—it begins in the middle and has no end. Why should you envy Sister Pilar this kinship?

Silence.

Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, it is a dire and awful thing to keep back aught in the Confessional; admit.

Sister Assumcion: He was not her kinsman, as it happens, and ... even had he been....

Jaime Rodriguez (eagerly): Well?

Sister Assumcion: Father ... pray....

Jaime Rodriguez: I begin to understand; your foolish, vain, envious heart was sore that this knight treated you coldly, and you have dared to dream that that most virtuous and holy lady, Sister Pilar....

Sister Assumcion (hotly): Dreaming? Had you been in the orchard last evening, and seen what I saw, you would not speak of dreaming!

Jaime Rodriguez (breathlessly): What did you see?

Silence.

Jaime Rodriguez: You have gone too far, daughter, to turn back now. I must hear all.

Sister Assumcion: Well, last evening, just before Compline, I went down to the orchard to breathe the cool air; and there I came upon Sister Pilar and this knight; but they were so deep in talk they did not perceive me, so I hid behind a tree and listened.

Jaime Rodriguez: Well?

Sister Assumcion: Well, he is, I think, clean mad, and she, too, is of a most fantastical conceit; and sometimes their words seemed empty of all sense and meaning, but sometimes it was as clear as day—little loving harping upon foolishness and little tricks of speech or manner, as it might be a country lad and lass wooing at a saints’ shrine: “there again!” “what?” “You burred your R like a child whose mouth is full of chestnuts.” “Nay, I did not!” “Why, yes, I say you did!” And then a great silence fell on them, she with her eyes downcast, he devouring her with his, and the air seemed too heavy for them even to draw their breath; then up she started, and trembled from head to foot, and fled to the house.

Jaime Rodriguez: But ... but ... yes; thank you, daughter ... I mean, six paters daily for a fortnight. (Gabbles mechanically): Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat: et ego auctoritate ipsius te absolvo ab omni vinculo excommunicationis et interdicti in quantum possum, et tu indiges. Deinde ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Sister Assumcion crosses herself, rises and leaves the Confessional. After a few seconds, Sister Pilar enters it.

Sister Pilar: I ask your blessing, father. I confess to Almighty God, and to you, father....

Jaime Rodriguez: Well?

Sister Pilar: I unwittingly omitted the dipsalma between two verses in choir, father.

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, yes ... what else?

Sister Pilar: Last Sunday I chewed the Host with my back teeth instead of with my front.

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, yes, yes; small sins of omission and negligence ... what else?

Sister Pilar: That is all, father.

Jaime Rodriguez: All you have to confess?

Sister Pilar: All, father.

Jaime Rodriguez: But ... but ... this is ... daughter, you dare to come to me with a Saint’s confession? Bethink you of your week’s ride, ten stone walls to be cleared clean, seven pits from which to keep your horse’s hoofs ... not one of the Ten Commandments broken, daughter? Not one of the Seven Deadly Sins upon your conscience?

Sister Pilar: No, father.

Jaime Rodriguez: But ... beware ... most solemnly do I conjure you to beware of withholding aught in the Confessional.

Silence.

Jaime Rodriguez: Well, I shall question you. On what have you meditated by day?

Sister Pilar: On many things; all lovely.

Jaime Rodriguez: Of what have you dreamed o’ nights?

Sister Pilar: Of godly matters, cool cathedrals, and Jacob’s ladder.

Jaime Rodriguez: Of man?

Silence.

Jaime Rodriguez (threateningly): Daughter! Admit!

Sister Pilar: Sometimes ... I ... have dreamed of man.

Jaime Rodriguez: Of a man?

Sister Pilar: Of a monk dwelling in the same community who has sometimes knelt at the altar by my side to receive the Lord.

Jaime Rodriguez: But this is not a mixed community.

Sister Pilar: No, father.

Jaime Rodriguez: What of this monk, then?

Sister Pilar: You asked me, father, of my dreams.

Jaime Rodriguez: And had this monk of dreams the features of a living man?

Sister Pilar: Yes, father.

Jaime Rodriguez (hoarsely): Whose?

Sister Pilar: Sometimes they were the features of my father ... one night of an old Basque gardener we had in my home when I was a child.

Jaime Rodriguez: Pooh! Daughter, you are holding something back.... Beware! What of your allegory of the little stone the giant could not move?

Sister Pilar: I have confessed all my sins.

Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, I refuse to give you Absolution.

Sister Pilar crosses herself, rises, and goes out of the chapel. Jaime Rodriguez leaves the confessional looking pale and tormented; he is accosted by Trotaconventos, who has been sitting waiting.

Trotaconventos: A word with you, Don Jaime.

Jaime Rodriguez: Anon, anon, good dame. I have pressing business in the town.

Trotaconventos: Your business can wait, but not my words. They touch Sister Pilar. (He starts violently and looks at her expectantly.) You see, you will not to your business till I am done with you ... just one little word to bind you to my will! And in that I ever know the little word that will make men hurrying to church or market stand still as you are doing now, or else if they be standing still to run like zebras: they call me a witch.

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, yes, but you said you had ... a word ... touching ... for my ear.

Trotaconventos: And so I have, Don Jaime; I am making my soul. A hard job, your eyes say. Well, with my brushes and ointments I can make the complexion of a brown witch as fair as a lily, I can make an old face slough its wrinkles like a snake its skin in spring; and who knows what true penitence will not do to my soul?

Jaime Rodriguez: Good dame, I beseech you, to business!

Trotaconventos: And is not the saving of my soul business, if you please?

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, your confessor’s ... in truth, dame, I am much pressed for time.

Trotaconventos: And yet, though time, or the lack of him, expresses all the marrow from your bones, because of that little name you cannot move till I have said my say. Is it true that St. Mary Magdalene was once a bawd and a maker of cosmetics?

Jaime Rodriguez (with weary resignation): Aye.

Trotaconventos: And did you ever hear that she sold her daughter to a Jew, and that daughter a nun?

Jaime Rodriguez (in horror): Never!

Trotaconventos: But if she had, would her tears of penitence have washed it out?

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, if she had confessed it and done penance.

Trotaconventos: And what is more, become herself a scourge of sinners and saved the souls of two innocent babes for the Church?

Jaime Rodriguez: Yes, thus would she have acquired merit.

Trotaconventos: Well, I have brought as many maids to bed that multiplied by ten you will have baptised and buried when you are three score years and ten.... Why! it is no more to me than it was to my old father, who owned some land Carmona way, to take a heifer to bull. In truth, if Don Love still reigned in heaven and had not fallen with Satan into hell, your children’s children would be praying to Saint Trotaconventos that she would send them kisses and ribbons and moonless nights; my bones would be lying under the altar of some parish church, and two of my teeth in a fine golden reliquary would cure maids of pimples, lads of warts. All that lies very lightly on my soul ... but there are other things ... and ... (looking round furtively) these nights I’ve sometimes wished for a dog that I might hear his snore.... What if before she died Trotaconventos should be re-christened Convent-Scourge? I have learned ... oh, one of my trade needs must have as many eyes as the cow-herd of the Roman dame, I forget what the trovares call her, and as many ears as eyes ... that a certain nun of this convent ... you grow restive? Why, then, once more I must whisper the magic name and root you to the ground. Sister Pilar is deep in an amour with a knight of the Court ... an overbearing, vain, foolish man against whom I bear a grudge. And Trotaconventos means, before she dies, on one nun at least in place of opening, to shut the convent gate; nay, to bring her to her knees and penitence. Well, what think you?

Jaime Rodriguez: There is some dark thought brooding in your heart, and, unlike the crow, I deem it will hatch out acts black as itself,[4] but the whiteness of her virtue will not be soiled.

Trotaconventos: And is Sister Pilar too firmly settled in her niche to topple down? Yet how she laughs at you! Why, I have heard her say that you are neither man nor priest, but just a bundle of hay dressed up in a soutane, whose head is a hollow pumpkin holding a burning candle, to frighten boors and children with death and judgment on the eve of All Souls.

Jaime Rodriguez (hotly): She said that? When?

Trotaconventos: Why, I cannot mind me of the date; she has used you so often as a strop for sharpening her tongue. But let me unfold my plan. Maybe you know I am ever in and out of the Alcazar with draughts and oils and unguents ... and other toys that shall be nameless ... for Doña Maria. Poor soul! The fiends torment her, too, and she clutches at aught that may serve as atonement. I told her the story, and she was all agog to be the instrument for restoring the good name to the convents of Seville. She thanked me kindly for my communication, and sent her camarero to fetch me a roll of Malaga silk, and then she went to Don Pedro feigning ignorance of the knight’s name—for, next to his carbuncle, Don Pedro puts his faith in the strong right arm of Don Manuel de Lara—told him the tale, and wheedled from him a writ signed with the royal seal, the name to be filled in when she had learned it, for he is very jealous of the right which it seems alone among the Kings of Christendom is his—to punish infringements of canon, as well as of civil law. I have the writ, and towards sundown I shall come to the convent orchard with three alguaciles[5] to tear the canting Judas from his lady’s arms.

Jaime Rodriguez (in horror): Her arms? Nay, not that....

Trotaconventos: Why, yes; her arms and lips. Come, come, Sir Priest, think you it is with the feet and nose lovers embrace?

Jaime Rodriguez continues to gaze at her in horror.

Trotaconventos (chuckling): Oh, well I know the clerks of your kidney! Your talk would bring a blush to a bawd, and you’ll hold your sides and smack your lips over French fables and the like; but when it comes to flesh and hot blood and doing, you’ll draw down your upper lip, turn up your eyes, and cry, “But it’s not true. It cannot be!” Come, pull yourself together—’tis you must be the fowler of the nun.

Jaime Rodriguez (starting): I?

Trotaconventos: You.

Jaime Rodriguez: But the discipline of nuns lies with the Chapter.

Trotaconventos: Yes, yes, but, ’tis the common talk of Seville that the Prioress here is too busy with little hounds and apes and flutings and silk veils to care for discipline ... you’ll not get her wetting her slashed shoes in the orchard dew. You, the chaplain of this house, must meet me to-night outside the orchard’s postern to catch the nun red-handed and drag her before the Prioress.... Ah! to-night you’ll see whether it be only in songs and tales and little lewd painted pictures that folks know how to kiss!

Jaime Rodriguez (violently): I’ll not be there!

Trotaconventos: Not there? Why, Sister Pilar spoke truly: “neither man nor priest”—not man enough to take vengeance on his spurner, not priest enough to chastise a sinner.

Jaime Rodriguez (in a fury of despair): Ah! I will be there.

He rushes from the chapel. Trotaconventos looks after him, a slow smile spreading over her face, and she nods her head with satisfaction. Enter Sister Assumcion.

Trotaconventos: Aha! my little pigeon, how goes the world? Has my lotion cured that little roughness on your cheek? Come, my beauty, let me feel (she draws her hand down her cheek). Why, yes, it’s as smooth and satiny as a queen-apple (makes a scornful exclamation). And so that lantern-jawed Knight prefers Sister Whey to Sister Cream! Well, he’ll get well churned for his pains. Oh, the nasty Templar come to life ... oh, the pompous fool, marching with solemn gait like a lord abbot frowning over a great paunch because, forsooth, he has swallowed the moon and she has dissolved into humours in his belly! Oh ... oh ... with “good dame, do this,” and “good dame, do that,” as though I were his slave ... ’tis sweet when duty and vengeance chime together. (Looking maliciously at Sister Assumcion.) Spurned, too, by the pretty French trovar! Why, it is indeed a deserted damsel! Oh, you needn’t blush and toss your head; when I was of your age and your complexion, I could land a fish as well as throw a line. (Melting.) Never mind, poor poppet, you were wise in that you came to me with your tale of Don Joseph and my lady Susannah for once caught napping ... and that in each other’s arms. I have devised a pretty vengeance which I will unfold to you. Aye! you’ll see that proud white Guzman without her black veil, last in choir for the rest of her days, and every week going barefoot round the cloister while the Prioress drubs her! And the sallow knight who thought my cream had turned when it was but his own sour stomach ... he’ll have to sell his Moorish loot to buy waxen tapers, and be beaten round all the churches of Seville ... may I live to see the day! Never was there a sweeter medicine whereby to save one’s soul, than vengeance on one’s foes. (She pauses for a few seconds, and a strange light comes into her eyes.) Don Juan Tenorio, I have made my choice—I fight with the dead. (shakes her fist at the audience) Arrogant, flaunting youth! Beauty! Hot blood! From the brink of the grave Trotaconventos threatens you.