5
After tea they decided to go a walk, and escort Eben part of his way home—a delightful plan, it seemed to Anna, Jasper, and ’Snice; but to Anna and Jasper the Doña said firmly, “No, my darlings; I want you.”
Their faces fell; they knew it meant what Nanny, who was a Protestant, called “a Bible lesson from kind Granny.”
Needless to say, the fact that these lessons were opposed to the wishes—nay, to the express command—of Dr. Sinclair, was powerless in deterring the Doña from attempting to save her grandchildren’s souls; and, even if she failed in the attempt, they should at any rate not be found in the condition of criminal ignorance of the children of one of Pepa’s friends who had asked why there were always “big plus-signs” on the tops of churches.
The Doña was not merely a Catholic; she was also a Christian—that is to say, though she did not always follow his precepts, she had an intense personal love of Christ.
Besides the shadowy figure struggling towards “projection” through the ritual of the Church’s year, there are more concrete representations on which the Catholic can feed his longings.
The Doña’s love of Christ dated from the first Seville Holy Week that she could remember.
She had sat with her mother and her little brother, Juanito, watching the pasos carried past on the shoulders of the cofradias ... many a beautiful Virgin, velvet-clad, pearl-hung, like Isabella the Catholic. Then had come a group of more than life-sized figures—a young, bearded man, his face as white as death and flecked with blood, the veins of his hands as knotted as the cords that bound them, surrounded by half a dozen fiendish-looking men, fists clenched as if about to strike him, some clutching stones in their upraised hands, all with faces contorted with hatred.
“Look! Look! Who are these wicked men?” cried Juanito.
“These are the Jews,” answered their mother.
“And who is the poor man?” asked the Doña.
“Jésus Christos.”
Juanito, his little fists clenched, was all for flying at the plaster bullies; but the Doña was howling for pity of the pobre caballero.
Then, at Christmas time in every church there was a crèche in which lay the Infant Jesus, his small, waxen hands stretched out in welcome, his face angelically sweet.
Also; at different times, for instance, when the Gospel was read in Spanish, during her preparation for her first Communion, the abstract presentation of the Liturgy had been supplemented with stories from His life on earth, and quotations from His own words.
Indeed, the sources and nature of the Doña’s knowledge of Jesus was not unlike that of some old peasant woman of Palestine. The old woman, say, would, from time to time, ride into Nazareth on her donkey, carrying a basket of grapes and olives to sell in the market: and perhaps, if the basket should have fallen and scattered the fruit, or if she had a pitcher to fill at the fountain, she may have received a helping hand or a kindly word from the gentlest and strangest-spoken young man that had ever crossed her path.
Then one day she may have paid her first visit to Jerusalem—perhaps a lawsuit over a boundary taking her there, or the need to present her orphaned grandchild in the Temple—and have seen this same young man led through the streets, bound with cords, while the populace shouted, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” and have returned to her remote little farm with an ache in her heart.
And, as the years would go by, from the tales of wayfarers, from rumours blown from afar, she might come to believe that somehow or other the young man had died for the poor—for her; had died and risen again. And gradually, as with the years his legend grew, she would come to look upon him as a fairy-being, akin to the old sanctities of the countryside, swelling her grapes, plumping her olives, and keeping away locusts and blight. But, towards the end of her life, business may have taken her again to Nazareth, where, hearing that the young man’s mother was still alive, something may have compelled her to go and visit her. And in the little room behind the carpenter’s shop, where the other sons and grandsons were planing and sawing, and singing to ancient melodies of the desert songs of plenty and vengeance and the Messiah, the two old women would talk together in hushed tones of Him who so many years ago had been crucified and buried. And through the mother’s anecdotes of His childhood and tearful encomiums, “He was ever a good kind son to me,”—the fairy-being would once more become human and ponderable—the gentlest young man that had ever crossed her path.
So far, the Doña had not been very successful in bringing Anna and Jasper to their Lord.
For instance, when she had told them the story of Christ among the doctors, Anna had merely remarked coldly and reprovingly, “He must have been a very goody-goody, grown-uppish sort of boy.”
This particular evening the Doña had decided to consecrate to an exegesis of the doctrine of Transsubstantiation.
When the Doña said that at a certain point of the mass the bread turned to the actual flesh and blood and bones of Jesus, Anna’s face assumed an expression of dogged scepticism, and having decided that she must ask Teresa about it, continued her own thoughts: Mamselle, who gave her French lessons in Cambridge, had fired her imagination with accounts of the bouktis they used to have in the Surbiton family where she was once governess—“vraiment, c’était passionant; je me demande pourquoi Dr. Sinclair n’organise pas des bouktis à Trinité—ça serait très amusant pour les jeunes gens....” It was a good idea! All the people with buried names of books, and having to guess. Oh, yes!... one could go with a lot of little lambs’ tails sewed on one’s frock ... yes, but how was one going to get in the “of Shakespeare”.... Of course ... what a goose she was not to have realised it before ... bouktis was Mamselle’s way of saying “book-teas” ... that’s what the parties were called—“book-teas.”
Thus Anna; as to Jasper—if one could reduce the instantaneous and fantastic picture produced on his mind to a definite consecutive statement, it would read something like this: By the powerful spells of a clergyman, who was also a magician, pieces of bread were turned into tiny men—long-robed, bearded, and wearing golden straw hats of which nothing but the brim could be seen from in front. Then the clergyman distributed to every one at the party one of the tiny men, to be their very own. They each, forthwith, swallowed their tiny man, and he made himself a little nest in their stomachs, whence he could be summoned to be played with whenever they liked.
He began jumping up and down, his body trembling like that of an excited terrier.
“Oh, I want, I want, I want some of that bread,” he cried. “Oh, when can I have it, Doña? Oh, I can’t wait!”
Needless to say, the Doña was not in the least taken in—she did not take it for a sign of Grace, nor did it seem to her in the least touching; but she knew it would strike Jollypot as being both, and the picture she foresaw that the incident would produce on her—that of the innocent little pagan calling aloud to God for the spiritual food that was his birthright—was one that the Doña felt would be both soothing, and expressive of the way in which she would have liked the incident to have appeared to herself.
A perfect household of slaves would include a sentimentalist and a cynic by means of whom the lord, whatever his own temperament, could express vicariously whatever interpretation of events was the one that harmonised with his plans or mood of the moment.
It was as she expected; Jollypot’s eyes filled with tears, and she murmured, “Poor little man! poor little man!”
And she was long haunted by the starving cry of the innocent, “I want that bread! I want that bread!”