— Fish!. .
Gwyon shipped his oars; or sat, at any rate, as though he had done so, his hands drawn up before his face. There the fingers continued in agitated movement, dissembling the single persistent element in the variety of expressions passing over his face. Each expression embraced his features familiarly: each one was familiar to his face, but seldom had they followed one upon another in such swift succession, as the rate of his commutation between one past and another, the distant past and that more recent, increased; and the shocks of the present, those intervals when he was interrupted as he might have been changing vehicles, came more frequently. A gleam, however, persisted in Gwyon's eyes, a look of keen attention which commenced to glitter with something near cunning each time he turned it surreptitiously on his obstreperous passenger, now hunched over the plate of fish, eating ravenously.
Janet entered, bearing a single plate in her gloved hands. She was not looking where she put it down but straight across the table. The fish was almost gone. Reverend Gwyon lowered a hand and pushed the newspaper clipping aside to make room for the plate being lowered before him, noticing the clipping as he did so, recalling, — That food package, Janet? She said nothing; and Gwyon had to look up at her face to see her faint nod. Her face looked more blue than it did usually, for Janet had gone quite pale in the past few minutes. She went out saying, — There is no egg, over her shoulder, and left Gwyon staring into a plate of white navy beans.
The fish was gone, and the outburst commenced abruptly with, — That cross, you know, that cross, I've always. . but I mean just now I didn't. . The hand stopped in the middle of gesturing to the hall, where the cruz-con-espejos still lay on the floor.
Gripping the table edge with one hand, Gwyon snatched at the newspaper clipping with the other. He was too late; and could do no more than watch it picked up as though the wind had got it, and spread it out on the air between them. On one side a little girl in long white stockings stared out obliquely from an indistinct picture, on the other, the sharp eyes of a man from under the even division of a shiny widow's peak.
— This…
— That, said Gwyon, planting a hand on the paper as it fell back to the table, — is Señor Hermoso Hermoso. I don't understand it. I don't understand it at all. Confession of her attacker, it says here. Why, this is Señor Hermoso Hermoso. And this picture? taken when he was young of course, why this is Señor Hermoso Hermoso, a very respectable man in San Zwingli. I knew him there, Reverend Gwyon went on muttering, — years after the crime. Years after. His hand held the paper down flat on the table between them. — Years after, Gwyon repeated, hiding the marginal calculations with his sleeve.
— Yes, but she. . she…
— She?. . Gwyon looked up anxiously when he did not go on, to see him stopped, confused and preoccupied. It was a bone, in the last mouthful of fishmeat, and Gwyon's own face twitched, watching him remove it.
— But now, he went on more evenly, rid of the fishbone, — now I feel recovered. A lot recovered. Yes, here I am, he said, and though their eyes had caught one another's at a number of angles, he now looked Reverend Gwyon full in the face for the first time. — And I… you must wonder what I've been doing, all this time?
Gwyon lowered his eyes. He started to make a steadying sound, but was interrupted as soon as his voice broke in his throat; and so he began to eat the navy beans.
— Yes, now here we are, and. . because down there, things got confused down there, dreadfully confused. I couldn't begin to tell you everything that happened, everything… I hardly know myself, except… I hardly believe it now, I hardly believe they actually did happen. And so I… well there, so I just left it all there, it was getting to be so unreal anyhow that it… and I… well here, here to go on from where reality left off, to recover myself, and. . After all, it's what I was trained for, and I… the ministry, a career with the times, in keeping with the times. He took a hand from the edge of the table to rub it over his face. — And all that. . fabrication, there's no reason to believe it ever existed, and she. . that city? If I fell among thieves? Why, there are places more real, there are places in books, there are people in plays more real than… all that. It was turning into a… a regular carnival. With a quick look up from his plate, Gwyon saw him shake his head slightly, four fingers pressed to a temple, then he broke out with the same constricted laugh. — Yes, a carnival, remember? O flesh, farewell! and he jumped up so suddenly that Gwyon dropped his fork and got hold of the table with both hands, like a man grabbing for the gunwales in fear of capsizing.
— But here, I feel like I'm being watched here. I always felt that way, but. . secure, being watched. He paused in the corner where all Good works were conceived. — You're watching me, aren't you! He caught Gwyon's glittering eye, and then turned toward the window, but did not reach it, he was stopped by the low table there and stared down at it. — It. . you see? he said turning, and his whole face was softened in a sickly smile, — this. . "in hell is all manner of delight"… he coughed, — when the Seven Sins pay a call? But no matter, his features drew tight again and he looked away. — Not now, he whispered.
Gwyon, seated firmly, feet planted wide apart on the floor as though the hull were rolling, watched him standing there looking out through the glass. Outside the window, the snow fell in heavier smaller particles, at different angles to the earth, here in foreground from right to left, and beyond from left to right, not swirling but apparently on separate planes. There was a long pause before he spoke, more quietly, without turning from the glass, — And when the seed began to grow, 'twas like a garden full of snow. . do you remember that?
Attentive as he was, Reverend Gwyon did not seem to be listening: all of his attention was in his eyes which, narrow and widen as they might with the expressions of his face, had not lost their gleam. Since the moment he had, as it were, almost tumbled into the tailsheets, he sat erect and more firm at the head of the table. His face, which had reflected coming forth from his own memory to the present, and then retreating to extreme confines of memory lying centuries beyond his years, now seemed to embrace them all in sudden intensity as he leaned forward.
At that moment Janet came in with a sail of wrapping paper. — If Reverend will write their name on this, she said, reefing it, — for I cannot write foreign, and she handed over the stub of a black crayon. Subdued, with a quick look at the fishbones and not elsewhere, she took that plate in a square gloved hand and went out, leaving Gwyon staring at the wrapping paper, the concentration in his face gone as suddenly as it had come there. Then his hand came up slowly and plotted the words of address to Estre-madura. His lips moved, and seemed to draw the clear even whisper across the smooth table to themselves.
— And if beauty did provoke thieves, sooner than gold? The path I've come on, and you'd remember, here, how as an… ape to nature, I excelled. The path the foul spirits kept clean, but it's over. By all that's ugly, it's done.
Real Monasterio, Gwyon wrote, his lips moving, de Nuestra Señora de la Otra Vez, as the whisper came closer, and broke out in a voice over his head,
— What's this? Spain?
— Spain? Gwyon repeated. He dropped the crayon stub, looking up, and his large hand trembled over the newspaper clipping.
— Going to Spain?
— It doesn't snow there, Gwyon said lowering his eyes, until they fixed on the little girl in long white stockings. — But the cold, on the hill where. . He shuddered. — That land! he broke out. — Damned, empty land, you're part of it when you're there. Part of it, that self-continent land, and when you're out, outside, shut out, and look back on it, you look back on its emptiness from your own, look over its ragged edges to its… its hard face, refuses to admit you've ever touched it. He was staring blankly at the newspaper clipping.