(Pause.)
(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):Youlove 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!Iam 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:Iam 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 thetrovar’swords!) piled high on my heart. I became a flame.... You are of the South, you have never seen a fire consuming a sun-parchedvegain 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, atrovarfrom 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 thetrovarand took the key!
Sister Pilar(horror-stricken): Youkilledhim?
Don Manuel de Lara: Yes ... and would have killed a thousand such for the key ... a low, Frenchjongleur! The world is all the better for his loss. Thedog! 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 anexemplumtold 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 thetrovarmore to her taste than you ... yes, I have it!Iam 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, butin 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 engenderedyouin 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?...Magnaopera 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 Pilarslowly moves away.
Sister Pilarslowly 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.)
(Pause.)
Sister Pilar(almost inaudibly): Good-night.
A week later. The Chapel of the Convent of San Miguel.Sister Assumcionkneels in the Confessional, whereJaime Rodriguezis receiving penitents.
A week later. The Chapel of the Convent of San Miguel.Sister Assumcionkneels in the Confessional, whereJaime Rodriguezis 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 teabsolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Sister Assumcioncrosses herself, rises and leaves the Confessional. After a few seconds,Sister Pilarenters it.
Sister Assumcioncrosses herself, rises and leaves the Confessional. After a few seconds,Sister Pilarenters 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 thedipsalmabetween 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, youdareto 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.
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.
Silence.
Jaime Rodriguez(threateningly): Daughter! Admit!
Sister Pilar: Sometimes ... I ... have dreamed of man.
Jaime Rodriguez: Ofaman?
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 confessedall my sins.
Jaime Rodriguez: Daughter, I refuse to give you Absolution.
Sister Pilarcrosses herself, rises, and goes out of the chapel.Jaime Rodriguezleaves theconfessional looking pale and tormented; he is accosted byTrotaconventos, who has been sitting waiting.
Sister Pilarcrosses herself, rises, and goes out of the chapel.Jaime Rodriguezleaves theconfessional looking pale and tormented; he is accosted byTrotaconventos, 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 toSaintTrotaconventos 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 thetrovarescall 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 Pilaris deep in anamourwith 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 hercamareroto 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 learnedit, 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 Rodriguezcontinues to gaze at her in horror.
Jaime Rodriguezcontinues 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 anddoing, 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.Trotaconventoslooks after him, a slow smile spreading over her face, and she nods her head with satisfaction. EnterSister Assumcion.
He rushes from the chapel.Trotaconventoslooks after him, a slow smile spreading over her face, and she nods her head with satisfaction. EnterSister 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 Frenchtrovar! 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, poorpoppet, 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.
The evening of the same day. The convent orchard.Sister PilarandDon Manuel de Laraare lying locked in each other’s arms. She extricates herself and sits up.
The evening of the same day. The convent orchard.Sister PilarandDon Manuel de Laraare lying locked in each other’s arms. She extricates herself and sits up.
Sister Pilar(very slowly): You ... have ... ravished ... me.
Don Manuel de Lara(triumphantly): Yes, eyes of my heart; I have unlocked your sweet body.
(Pause.)
(Pause.)
Sister Pilar: Strange! Has my prayer been answered? And by whom?
Don Manuel de Lara: What prayer, beloved?
Sister Pilar: That night you were the other side of the wall, I prayed that I might behold the woof without the warp of sin, a still, quiet, awful world, and all the winds asleep. (Very low.)ITwas like that. (Springing to her feet.) Christ Jesus! Blessed Virgin! Guardian angel, where was your sword? I, a nun, a bride of Christ, I have been ravished. I am fallen lower than the lowest woman of the town, I have forfeited my immortal soul. (Sobbing, she sinks down again besideDon Manuel, and lays her head on his shoulder.) Beloved! Why have you brought me to this? Why, my beloved?
Don Manuel de Lara(caressing her): Hush, little love, hush! Your body is small and thin ... hush!
Sister Pilar: But how came it to fall out thus? Why?
Don Manuel de Lara: Because there was something stronger than the angels, than all the hosts of the dead.
Sister Pilar: What?
Don Manuel de Lara: I cannot say ... something ... I feel it—yet, where are these words? They have suddenly come to me:amor morte fortior—against love the dead whose aid you, and I, too, invoked, cannot prevail.
Sister Pilar(shuddering): Yet the dead kept Sister Assumcion from hertrovar.
Don Manuel de Lara: Their souls were barques too light to be freighted with love; for it is very heavy.
Sister Pilar: And so they did not sink.
Don Manuel de Lara: Who can tell if lightness of soul be not the greatest sin of all? And as to us ... the proverb says the paths that lead to God are infinite... beloved, I feel.... Something holy is with us to-day.
Sister Pilar: Fiends, fiends, wearing the weeds of angels.... (Groans.)
Don Manuel de Lara: Rest, small love ... there, I’ll put my cloak for your head. Why is your body so thin and small?
Sister Pilar(her eyes fixed in horror): I cannot believe that it is really so. A week since, yesterday, an hour since, I ... was ... a ... a ... virgin, and now ... can God wipe out the past?
Don Manuel de Lara: Nay ... nor would I have Him do so.
Sister Pilar: Beloved ... we have sinned ... most grievously.
Don Manuel de Lara: What is sin? I would seem to have forgotten. What is sin, beloved? Be my herald and read me his arms.
Sister Pilar: Death ... I have said that before ... ah, yes, to thetrovar... death, death....
Don Manuel de Lara: With us is neither sin nor death. You yourself said that duringITsin vanished.
Sister Pilar: Yes ... so it seemed ... (almost inaudibly) ’twas what I feel, only ten times multiplied, when I eat Christ in the Eucharist.
Don Manuel de Lara: Hush, beloved, hush! You are speaking wildly.
Sister Pilar: Oh! what did I say? Yes, they were wild words.
(Pause.)
(Pause.)
Sister Pilar: Do you know, we are in the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi? I seem to have fallen from the wheel of the Calendar to which I have been tied all my life ... saints, apostles, virgins, martyrs, rolled round, rolled round, year after year ... likethe Kings and Popes and beggars on the Wheel of Fortune in my mother’s book of Hours. Yes, beloved, we have fallen off the wheel and are lying stunned in its shadow among the nettles and deadly night-shade; but above us, creaking, creaking, the old wheel turns. It may be we are dead ... are we dead, beloved?
Through the treesSister Assumcionis heard shouting, “Sister Pilar! Sister Pilar!”Sister Pilarstarts violently and once more springs to her feet.Sister Assumcionappears running towards them.
Through the treesSister Assumcionis heard shouting, “Sister Pilar! Sister Pilar!”Sister Pilarstarts violently and once more springs to her feet.Sister Assumcionappears running towards them.
Sister Assumcion(breathlessly): Quick! Quick! Not a moment ... they’ll be here! I cannot ... quick! (She presses her hand to her side in great agitation).
Don Manuel de Lara: What is all this? Speak, lady.
Sister Assumcion: Trotaconventos ... Don Jaime ... thealguaciles.
Don Manuel de Lara: Take your time, lady. When you have recovered your breath you will tell us what all this portends.
Sister Assumcion: Away! Away! Trotaconventos has been to Don Pedro ... she has a writ against you ... thealguacileswill take you to prison ... and Don Jaime comes to catch Sister Pilar ... fly! fly! ere ’tis too late.
Sister Pilar(dully): Caught up again on the wheel ... death’s wheel, and it will crush us.
Sister Assumcion(shaking her): Rouse yourself, sister! You yet have time.
Don Manuel de Lara: We are together, beloved ... do you fear?
Sister Pilar: No ... I neither fear, nor hope, nor breathe.
Sister Assumcion: Mad, both of them! I tell you, they come with thealguaciles.
Don Manuel de Lara: And if they came with all the hosts of Christendom and Barbary, yet should you see what you will see. I have a key, and I could lock the postern, but I’ll not do so. (He picks up his sword, girds it on, and draws it.) Why ... all the Spring flows in my veins to-day.... I am the Spring. What man can fight the Spring?
Sound of voices and hurrying steps outside the postern.Trotaconventos,Jaime Rodriguez, and three alguaciles come rushing in.Sister Assumcionshrieks.
Sound of voices and hurrying steps outside the postern.Trotaconventos,Jaime Rodriguez, and three alguaciles come rushing in.Sister Assumcionshrieks.
Trotaconventos: There, my brave lads, I told you! Caught in the act ... the new Don Juan Tenorio and his veiled concubine!
Don Manuel de Lara: Silence, you filthy, bawdy hag! (glares at her.) Here stand I, Don Manuel de Lara, and here stands a very noble lady of Spain and a bride of Christ, and here is my sword. Who will lay hands on us? You, Don Priest, pallid and gibbering? You, vile old woman, whose rotten bones need but a touch to crumble to dust and free your black soul for hell? You ... (his eyes rest on the alguaciles). Why! By the rood ... ’tis Sancho and Domingo and Pedro! Old comrades, you and I, beneath the rain of heaven and of Moorish arrows have buried our dead; we have sat by the camp-fire thrumming our lutes or capping riddles (laughs). How does it go? “I am both hot and cold, and fish swim in me without my being a river,” and the answer is a frying-pan ... and in the cold dawn of battle we have kneeled side by side and eaten God’s Body.
The alguaciles smile sheepishly and stand shuffling their feet.
The alguaciles smile sheepishly and stand shuffling their feet.
Trotaconventos: At him! At him, good lads! What is his sword to your three knives and cudgels? Remember, you carry a warrant with Don Pedro’s seal.
Sancho(dubiously): ’Tis true, captain, we carry a royal warrant for your apprehension.
Trotaconventos: At him! At him!
Don Manuel de Lara: At me then! Air! Fire! Water! A million million banners of green leaves! A mighty army of all the lovers who have ever loved! Come, then, and fight them in me!You, too, were there that day when the whole army saw the awful ærial warrior before whom the Moors melted like snow ... what earthly arrows could pierce his star-forged mail? I, too, have been a journey to the stars. I wait! At me!
The alguaciles stand as if hypnotised.
The alguaciles stand as if hypnotised.
Trotaconventos: Rouse yourselves, you fools! Oh, he’s a wonder with his stars and his leaves. Why, on his own showing, he is but a tumbler at a fair in a suit of motley covered with spangles, or a Jack-in-the-green at a village May-day. Come to your senses, good fellows; we can’t stay here all night.
Don Manuel de Lara: Sancho, hand me that warrant.
Trotaconventos: No! No! You fool!
Without a wordSanchohands the warrant toDon Manuel, who reads it carefully through.
Without a wordSanchohands the warrant toDon Manuel, who reads it carefully through.
Don Manuel de Lara: Sir Priest! I see you carry quill and ink-horn.... I fain would borrow them of you.
Trotaconventos: No! No! Do not trust him, Don Jaime.
Don Manuel de Lara(impatiently): Come, Sir Priest.
Jaime Rodriguezobeys him in silence.Don Manuelmakes an erasure in the warrant and writes in words in its place.
Jaime Rodriguezobeys him in silence.Don Manuelmakes an erasure in the warrant and writes in words in its place.
Don Manuel de Lara(handing the warrant to Sancho): There, Sancho, I have made a little change ... you’ll not go home with an empty bag, after all. (Pointing to Jaime Rodriguez.) There stands your quarry, looking like a sleep-walker ... to gaol with him ... until his arch-priest gets him out ... ’twill make a good fable, “which tells of a Prying Clerk and how he cut himself on his own sharpness.”
The alguaciles, chuckling, seizeJaime Rodriguezand bind him, he staring all the time as if in a dream.
The alguaciles, chuckling, seizeJaime Rodriguezand bind him, he staring all the time as if in a dream.
Trotaconventos(stamping): You fools! You fools! Andyou(turning toDon Manuel) ... you’ll lose your frenzied head for tampering with Don Pedro’s seal.
Don Manuel de Lara: Nay, I’d not lose it if I tampered with his carbuncle ... he is menaced by shadows and I fight them for him. Nor, on my honour as a Knight, shall one hair of the head of Sancho and Pedro and Domingo there suffer for this. Butyou... you heap of dung outside the city’s wall, you stench of dogs’ corpses, devastating plague ...youshall die ... not by my sword, however (draws his dagger and stabs Trotaconventos). Away with her and your other quarry, Sancho ... good-day, old comrades ... here’s to drink my health (throws them a purse).