“You don’t know what we’ve found, what we’ve found, what we’ve found!” “Let me say! a dead hare, and we’ve buried him and....” “And I’ve found a new fern; I’ve got ten and a half kinds now and I ought to get a Girl Guide’s badge for them, and the Doña promised me some more blotting-paper, but....”
Teresa stroked Jasper’s sticky little hand and listened indulgently to their chatter. Then they caught sight of Mrs. Lane coming out of the house, and rushed at her, shouting, “Doña! Doña!”
The Spaniards deal in a cavalier way with symbolism; for instance, they put together from the markets, and streets, and balconies of Andalusia a very human type of female loveliness; next, they express this type with uncompromising realism in painted wooden figures which they set up in churches, saying, “This is not Pepa, or Ana, or Carmen. Oh, no! It isn’t a woman at all: it’s a mysterious abstract doctrine of the Church called the Immaculate Conception.” They then proceed to fall physically in love with this abstract doctrine—serenading it with lyrics, organising pageants in its honour, running their swords through those who deny its truth, storming the Vatican for its acceptance.
Hence, for those who are acquainted with Spain, it is hard to look on Spanish concrete things with a perfectly steady eye—they are apt to become transparent without losing their solidity.
However this may be, Mrs. Lane (the Doña, as her friends and family called her), standing there smiling and monumental, with the children clinging to her skirts, seemed to Teresa a symbol—of what she was not quite sure. Maternity? No, not exactly; but it was something connected with maternity.
The children, having said their say, made for the harbour of their own little town—to wit, the nursery—where, over buns, and honey, and chocolate cake, they would tell their traveller’s tales; and the Doña bore down slowly upon Teresa and sank heavily into a basket chair. She raised her lorgnette and gazed at her daughter critically.
“Teresa,” she said, in her slow, rather guttural voice, “why do you so love that old skirt? But I warn you, it is going to the very next jumble sale of Mrs. Moore.”
Teresa smiled quite amicably.
“Why can’t you let Concha’s elegance do for us both?” she asked.
So toneless and muted was Teresa’s voice that it was generally impossible to deduce from it, as also from her rather weary impassive face, of what emotion her remarks were the expression.