Had not she run away from the convent, broken her vows? And yet how convinced she was that she was doing rightly! The mysterious Powers emphatically approved; she felt sure of it. And now there was the red purse. But what was a red purse in comparison with a saved soul—and, after all, what was she doing hut saving Kuno’s soul?» Miss Penny, who had adapted the voice and gestures of a debater asking rhetorical questions, brought her hand with a slap on to the table. «Lord, what a bore this sort of stuff is!» she exclaimed. «Let’s get to the end of this dingy anecdote as quickly as possible.
By this time, you must imagine, the shades of night were falling fast—the chill November twilight, and so on; but I leave the natural descriptions to you. Kuno gets into the ditch at the roadside and takes off his robes. One imagines that he would feel himself safer in trousers, more capable of acting with decision in a crisis. They tramp on for miles. Late in the evening they leave the high road and strike up through the fields towards the forest. At the fringe of the wood they find one of those wheeled huts where the shepherds sleep in the lambing season.
«The real ‘Maison du Berger.'»
«Precisely,» said Miss Penny, and she began to recite:
«Si ton coeur gémissant du poids de notre vie
Se traine et se débat comme un aigle blessé….
«How does it go on? I used to adore it all so much when I was a girl.
«Le seuil est perfumé, l’alcôve est large et sombre,
Et là parmi les fleurs, nous trouverons dans l’ombre,
Pour nos cheveux unis un lit silencieux.
«I could go on like this indefinitely.»
«Do,» I said.
«No, no. No, no. I’m determined to finish this wretched story. Kuno broke the padlock of the door. They entered. What happened in that little hut?» Miss Penny leaned forward at me. Her large hare’s eyes glittered, the long ear-rings swung and faintly tinkled. «Imagine the emotions of a virgin of thirty, and a nun at that, in the terrifying presence of desire. Imagine the easy, familiar brutalities of the young man. Oh, there’s pages to be made out of this—the absolutely impenetrable darkness, the smell of straw, the voices, the strangled crying, the movements!
And one likes to fancy that the emotions pulsing about in that confined space made palpable vibrations like a deep sound that shakes the air. Why, it’s ready-made literature, this scene. In the morning,» Miss Penny went on, after a pause, «two woodcutters on their way to work noticed that the door of the hut was ajar. They approached the hut cautiously, their axes raised and ready for a blow if there should be need of it.
Peeping in, they saw a woman in a black dress lying face downward in the straw. Dead? No; she moved, she moaned. ‘What’s the matter?’ A blubbered face, smeared with streaks of tear-clotted grey dust, is lifted towards them. ‘What’s the matter?’—’He’s gone!’ What a queer, indistinct utterance. The woodcutters regard one another. What does she say? She’s a foreigner, perhaps. ‘What’s the matter?’ they repeat once more. The woman bursts out violently crying. ‘Gone, gone! He’s gone,’ she sobs out in her vague, inarticulate way. ‘Oh, gone. That’s what she says.
Who’s gone?’—’He’s left me.’—’What?’—’Left me….’—’What the devil…? Speak a little more distinctly.’—’I can’t,’ she wails; ‘he’s taken my teeth.’—’Your what?—’My teeth!’—and the shrill voice breaks into a scream, and she falls back sobbing into the straw. The woodcutters look significantly at one another. They nod. One of them applies a thick yellow-nailed forefinger to his forehead.»
Miss Penny looked at her watch. «Good heavens!» she said, «it’s nearly half-past three. I must fly. Don’t forget about the funeral service,» she added, as she put on her coat. «The tapers, the black coffin, in the middle of the aisle, the nuns in their white-winged coifs, the gloomy chanting, and the poor cowering creature without any teeth, her face all caved in like an old woman’s, wondering whether she wasn’t really and in fact dead—wondering whether she wasn’t already in hell. Good-bye.»
The End
