Three-Cornered Halo (10 page)

“Come Haste to the Hanging,” suggested Mr Cecil.

Miss Cockrill bent on him a humorously appreciative eye. “Exactly. And then, of course, there's the Shuffling Dance as the Major has called it.” She paused, looking at their bear-leader as though, so far prompted, he surely might take up the cue.

Major Bull did not fail her. “By Jove, yes. And the ‘Hanging Dance.' Fellers jigging about in the air, you know, held up by these belts like I told you.…”

“Meanwhile, individual groups are doing dances on their own: supposed to be relatives of the different men.”

“Yes, by Jove, and then feller gets up out of the coffin and
he
does a dance. Relief you know. And then they all dance, everyone joins in, pleased as punch.” Pleased as punch himself after this dispensation of cultural knowledge, the Major climbed down from his bollard, adjusted the round linen cap and stumped off in pursuit of the boy with the drinks. The lady novelist had him pinned against a stanchion and was putting him through a third degree examination as to his feelings for his father. As the small boy, being an orphan, kept reiterating only ‘Innocento!' which she took to mean that they had been innocent
(most
disappointing!), they were not getting on very fast. The Major bought a drink for himself and offered one to Gruff who happened to be standing by; but she refused it brusquely—she could just about manage to buy her own drinks, she said, and was warmly applauded by Aunt Grim, who overheard all. “Jolly good! Old brute, I suppose he's After You,” said Grim. All men were beasts.

Tenebrossa is so called because of the darkness which envelopes, or long ago enveloped, the victims of the gallows; for the hoods were as blindfolding to the wearers as impenetrable to spectators. The island was doubtless chosen originally as being perfect for the purpose of a spectacle. Composed largely of rock, its western side is lightly wooded with oleander and wild olive, but to the south-east it is bare as the mountains of the moon, hollowed out into a natural amphitheatre with only one great, flat rock jutting out into the arena. On this the old gallows still gauntly stand: a line of stout upright posts, once vividly decorated; with eight metal pulleys of antique design through which a rope could be jerked by hand, leaving the victim to strangle slowly, dancing as he died. The whole, on fiesta day, is gaily beflagged and beflowered as in days of yore, a carpet of petals, intricately patterned, leads from the landing stage to El Exaltida's private pavilion; every hummock is claimed as a picnic table, bright cloths are spread and soon piled high with colour—brown bread, red wine, pimientos scarlet and green, pale yellow folded omelettes, purple grapes. The women have abandoned the black cloaks and veils of the morning and both sexes in their fiesta costume are bright as humming birds: and indeed, the chatter and colour would outmatch the most crowded of tropical aviaries.

There is no such thing on the Domenica di Boia, as reserving a picnic pitch; but the Diretore of the hotel, by dint of sending a dozen of the heavier-built members of his staff, had held off all invaders of a site in the arena chosen by himself, and by one o'clock the party had taken possession; the grouppa (with Miss Cockrill, Winsome and Mr Cecil associate members) keeping themselves to themselves, the rest of the hotel guests as rigorously excluding
them.
At two o'clock, El Exaltida arrived.

The grand ducal barge drew up at the landing stage, resplendent in white and gold, with a gay, striped awning, and at once, as though a great flock of coloured birds arose from the ground, everybody stood up. After the sermon that morning, there was a great craning of necks to see if La Bellissima had come: and she was there, walking remote and cool, a little behind her husband with a grave face and downcast eyes. The Grand Duke was in fiesta dress: black knee-breeches, tremendously embroidered down the outside of the thigh, silk stockings, buckled shoes, and the great black cloak, the right corner taken up and thrown across the chest and over the left shoulder. La Bellissima too wore the national dress, adapted like Mr Cecil's in sophisticate circles: narrow, pale green satin embroidered all over with little white flowers, a veil of embroidered net hanging over her head and falling in two straight panels in front, to the hem of her dress. Behind them crept El Exaltida's secretary, a little grey jackal of a man, nicknamed by the Grand Duke ‘Tabaqui' and so called throughout the island, though nobody else there had ever read any Kipling. The little French friends wriggled and giggled their way behind them, in anything but Juanese garb. In the rear of the procession came the court dignitaries, and El Patriarca in his white serge soutane, blessing everyone, right, left and centre with a fine nonchalance as he passed; and El Obispo (but more moderately), doing the same. Of El Arcivescovo, there was no sign.

El Gerente was in splendid form that afternoon, dashing hither and thither in the official gym. shoes, cloak flying, sabre rattling, barking out orders to the confusion of all. Tomaso di Goya had come ashore with him but made no attempt to follow in his erratic wake, strolling about instead, looking Byronic, surrounded by a group of anarchistic young men, all talking eagerly but with a determined air of secrecy. He wore fiesta dress, brightly embroidered, but his pale face with the long nose and sharp black eyes was sombre and intent. When he saw Miss Cockrill and Winsome, however, he allowed it to brighten and, dismissing his followers, came towards them, bowing and hand-kissing with a wealth of graceful flourishes. Miss Cockrill asked after the snuffboxes.

Winsome had not kept a tentative appointment she had made with Tomaso di Goya on the previous evening. Awaking ill at ease in body and mind, she had in the cold light of morning viewed with something approaching horror the gay extravagances of the night before; and an all too rewarding search through Vol. I., for an undertaking, in Juanita's authentic, thin, sloping, purple hand, to send up a cloud of rosy incense on the forthcoming Fiesta di San Juan—which is also the national Day of Roses—did absolutely nothing to allay her anxiety. She sent round to the Joyeria a casual note: she had greatly enjoyed all their fun and
nonsense
(tremendously underlined), but perhaps a joke could go
too far,
and now they really mustn't be naughty any more! Meanwhile, her cousin insisted (most tiresomely!) upon some expedition, so she wouldn't be free, after all, to see the Cathedral treasures he had kindly offered to show her.… In pursuance of this resolution she had forced Cousin Hat to a day of mortification in the San Juan Museum, poring with passionate intensity over a vast number of objects of no virtue whatsoever except that they occupied her time; and on the evening ramble through the town, kept to Major Bull's side with so firm a resolution as to make that great lover for the first time wonder whether, by any chance … But no, no. One or two of the older young things at the Heronsford tennis club made sheeps' eyes at him still, it was true; and several of the unattached ladies in his party had been flatteringly kind. But … An old buffer like him, grown white (not to mention red) in the service of his country, overseas.… It was impossible. And besides there was Hat.

Miss Cockrill, unaware of the inner uncertainties of her companions, meanwhile pursued idly the matter of the snuff-boxes. “Alas, Senora—who shall buy!” Unloaded now, and unpacked, they were stacked away, thousands of tiny crystal boxes crowding out all the storage place in his little shop; and no interest had been shown in the one in the window, none at all, though it had been priced at a figure hardly covering its cost, let alone the cost of the thousands that must remain unsold: no interest even from the touristi, even though for once they would really have been getting a bargain, even though the legend SMUGLED had been doubled in size, even though the inscription ‘Mad in San Juan' had been copied out in five different languages on pieces of cardboard, and dotted all about. The end of the season and his profits all gone in this one undertaking.… “Alas, Senora—no buone, my poor snuff-boxes.” He produced one, however, from his pocket, done up in a twist of tissue paper. “But I have brought one—for the Senorita.” He handed it to Winsome looking into her face with limpid eyes.

“For me?” She stammered and lost colour. “Why for me?”

Tomaso had spent half the night poring over tiny sketches, no sooner perfected and memorised than destroyed; and now his plans were advanced and he had need of a fellow conspiritor again; had need also of one so far implicated that she would keep ever silent, not for his sake but for her own. He looked back at her blandly. “A gift, Senorita. For the Senorita del Opale—to keep her opal in.”

“To keep my … But I couldn't.…” She explained, stammering wretchedly: “Senor di Goya has fallen in love with my ring.”

“And would like to see it happily housed—when it has not the greater happiness to be on the Senorita's finger.” He bowed and flourished and, tearing the last wrapping from the box, pressed it warmly into her helpless hand. “Accept it, Senorita. It is alas! of no value to me—except to give to the Senorita for her opal.” And by the way, he added, and this time looked directly into her face and permitted himself an infinitesimal wink, she would not forget that she had expressed a desire to see the thurible—the Collini thurible—before it was put away after its fiesta appearance this morning. He had arranged with the Archbishop, all was in readiness. Tomorrow? At eleven, perhaps? He would see to it, make a definite appointment: would see her later this evening and confirm it.… No trouble at all, a pleasure, a happiness: only, having put the Arcivescovo to some little exertion on her behalf, he must beg that the Senorita would keep the appointment,
she would not let him down.
…? Smiling and flourishing, he kissed hands all round, and with a last naughty glance from the sloe-black, gipsy eyes, drifted off again. “These people will go to any lengths,” said Cousin Hat, lost in wonder, gazing after him, “to get one to go into their shops and buy.”

Meanwhile, mention of the censer had raised in the Major a thirst to dispense further knowledge. “H'rm, h'rm. If-I-could-have-y'r-attentions-one-moment.” He leapt agilely on to a small rock hummock that formed the centre of the picnicking group and stood there looking like a mountain goat crowned with the white linen hat. “Ought to have told you. 'Bout that thurrible. Gold, you know. Made by feller called Bellini.”

“Cellini,” said Miss Cockrill.

Major Bull took a dekko at the book of the words and by Jove, there
was
a Bellini. “Yes, we all know that, Dick, but the thurible was made by Cellini. And you don't pronounce it thurrible.”

“To say thurrible,” said Mr Cecil, “is turrible.” Of course to say thorrible, he added thoughtfully, would be even more horrible.…

Miss Cockrill caught the infection. “And to say thorible——”

“Deplorable!”

“In fact, to be endurable——”

“You have to say thurible.”

The Major privately considered that if anything were deplorable it was that before embarking on the subject, he had not taken the precaution of another Quiet Talk with Hat. “Yes. H'rm. Very amusin'. Thing is, this thing was made by this feller Cellini, Bellini, whoever it was, for old Jewan himself.”

“My dear Dick!”

“It being well known,” said the Major hastily and for once correctly, “that old Jewan erected the cathedral to his own honour, years before he died.”

“But not two hundred years before. Cellini.…”

“All
right,
Hat. Well, there you are,” said the Major, puffing and blowing, “ 's all I wanted to tell you. Interestin' bit of history, what?” He climbed down from his eminence and was immediately set upon by the Back-Homes with the claims of the Forest Lawns cemetery to all thuribles made by Cellini and by Bellini too; and released only by the demands of the two suffering ladies to be shown the way without delay to the excusados. Mr Cecil had christened them D. and V.

After the collatione, the siesta; even in September, the afternoon sun is fierce and nothing really begins before five o'clock. Picnic baskets ringed the family pitches in the arena, as the people made for the woody grove; soon everyone was asleep, sprawled unashamedly in the shade of oleander and olive, the children lying like litters of puppies, their heads pillowed comfortably on their mothers' humped, rounded thighs. Up in the pavilion, a little miracle in itself of polished white marble, the only man-made thing (except for the painted gallows) on the island, El Exaltida lay, magnificent in sleep as in waking, the splendid head with its curling black hair on a pillow of embroidered silk, the great limbs relaxed on a cool marble couch covered with cloth of gold; a girl playing a zither very softly on the floor at his feet. Outside, Tabaqui, the grey secretary, was in a fever of activity, organising the pink champagne, sugared almonds, sweet chestnuts, green figs and innumerable gelati, any or none of which the Grand Duke might demand upon waking—nothing elaborate, mind, for the whole thing was a picnic and simplicity the keynote. “Suppose he asks for the dogs? Has anyone brought the dogs?” Nobody had brought the dogs but mercifully a small boy was spotted, curled up in sleep with a creature of the same breed as El Exaltida's, and if necessary this animal could be produced: the Grand Duke asked for his dogs very seldom and then only through caprice, and would never know the difference. “And Cristallo, is someone looking after Cristallo?” Cristallo was currently the favourite cat, inevitably white but wearing a collar of pearls with his blue ribbon bow. Being a cat, he was very efficiently looking after himself.

In her apartment next door to the Grand Duke's in the little pavilion, La Bellissima, however, was wide awake. She arose and went to the doorway and looked out at the groves of olive trees. “Senor Tabaqui!”

“Bellissima?”

She said in French: “I wish to walk down through the trees to that little stream. Must I take a guard?”