“I can smell sweetbriar!” cried David suddenly, a strange note of triumph in his voice, “it’s like a Scotch tune—‘Oh, my love is like a red red rose’!” and he laughed, a little wildly.
Teresa’s heart began to beat very fast, and seizing at random upon the first words that occurred to her, she said, “Concha’s like a red red rose,” and began to repeat mechanically:
“Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy.”
“I wasn’t thinking of her ...” he said. “I wasn’t ... Oh, my love is like the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley ... it’s all the same”; and then, abruptly: “Look! There’s the moon. She’s always the same—Scotland, Africa, in the trenches, here. She’s like books—Homer and the rest—in whatever land you open them, they just say the same thing that they did a hundred years ago.”
Far away a night-express flashed and shrieked through the view; then an owl hooted.
“So you are going back to-morrow,” she said.
“Yes.... Hark! There’s the sweetbriar again,” and he began to sing triumphantly:
“And I will come again, my Love, Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.”
He turned and looked at her with strangely shining eyes: “I hear you through the wall, getting up and going to bed every night and every morning. It makes me feel sick sometimes, like the smell of iodoform at the front; that’s a nice way of putting it!” and again he laughed wildly: “like the smell of sweetbriar! like the smell of the mass! Good-night,” and he got up hurriedly and strode towards the house. Then he came back: “Get up and come in,” he said gently; “it’s getting cold and damp,” and he pulled her up with a cool, firm hand.
They went in, lit their candles in the hall and said good-night at their bedroom doors; quietly, distantly.
David left early next morning; a stiff, genteel little letter of thanks came from him to the Doña, and then, for most of them, he might never have been.
Each day life at Plasencia became more and more focused on the approaching wedding; and the Doña and Jollypot spent hours in the morning-room making lists of guests and writing invitations.
As soon as David had gone Teresa began to write—the mediæval books had done their work and were no longer needed.