Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs; Old ditties sigh about their fathers’ graves; Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave Round every spot where trod Apollo’s foot; Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit, Where long ago a giant battle was....
Jollypot looked up eagerly from her crochet and said:
“Oh, do tell us more about it, Mr. Munroe.”
“Oh, well, it’s only that at times like these ... things are more ... more naked, maybe,” and he laughed apologetically. Then he added, as if to himself, “One sees the star.”
Jollypot murmured something inaudible, and her eyes filled with sympathetic tears; she was not certain of what he meant, but was sure it was something beautiful and mystical.
The Doña wondered if he had had shell-shock.
But Teresa turned in her chair and scrutinised him. What exactly did he mean? Not, she felt sure, what she herself would have meant, if she had used these words, namely, that, during the five years of the War, one had been continually, or so it seemed in retrospect, in that Apolline state of intoxication into which she had fallen that very night at dinner; no, not quite the same; for that had been purely Apolline, while during the War it had been at once Apolline and Dionysiac, in that it was oneself that one was looking at from these cool heights—oneself, a blind, deaf, dusty maniac, whirling in a dance.
And, if one liked, one might call such times “heliacal periods”—a time when the star is visible ... whatever the star may be.
But David, she felt sure, meant something concrete.
“Now, then, Concha, cut that red and come back on the blue ... ve-e-ry pree ... oh, hard luck!”
“Now, then ... all eyes on Captain Dundas!... Captain Dundas pots the black. Well, a very good game.”
Whereupon the Snooker party broke up; the men wriggling into their dinner-jackets, and Concha standing by the gramophone and swaying up and down as she hummed the latest jazz tune.
Guy came up to Teresa. “About Oscar Wilde—I do want to have a talk to you about him. Do you think—well, brilliancy—it has a certain literary value, don’t you think?”
“Yes; I suppose so,” she answered absently; she was watching Concha and Rory giggling by the gramophone.
“Well, _I_ am going to bed,” said the Doña, and, kissing her hand to Arnold, who was still knocking about the balls, she left the room, followed by Jollypot.