Domestic fiction; Family -- England -- Midlands -- Fiction; Midlands (England) -- Fiction
Vaguely she knew that Christ meant something else: that in the
vision-world He spoke of Jerusalem, something that did not exist in the
everyday world. It was not houses and factories He would hold in His
bosom: nor householders nor factory-workers nor poor people: but
something that had no part in the weekday world, nor seen nor touched
with weekday hands and eyes.
Yet she _must_ have it in weekday terms—she must. For all her life was
a weekday life, now, this was the whole. So he must gather her body to
his breast, that was strong with a broad bone, and which sounded with
the beating of the heart, and which was warm with the life of which she
partook, the life of the running blood.
So she craved for the breast of the Son of Man, to lie there. And she
was ashamed in her soul, ashamed. For whereas Christ spoke for the
Vision to answer, she answered from the weekday fact. It was a
betrayal, a transference of meaning, from the vision world, to the
matter-of-fact world. So she was ashamed of her religious ecstasy, and
dreaded lest any one should see it.
Early in the year, when the lambs came, and shelters were built of
straw, and on her uncle’s farm the men sat at night with a lantern and
a dog, then again there swept over her this passionate confusion
between the vision world and the weekday world. Again she felt Jesus in
the countryside. Ah, he would lift up the lambs in his arms! Ah, and
she was the lamb. Again, in the morning, going down the lane, she heard
the ewe call, and the lambs came running, shaking and twinkling with
new-born bliss. And she saw them stooping, nuzzling, groping to the
udder, to find the teats, whilst the mother turned her head gravely and
sniffed her own. And they were sucking, vibrating with bliss on their
little, long legs, their throats stretched up, their new bodies
quivering to the stream of blood-warm, loving milk.
Oh, and the bliss, the bliss! She could scarcely tear herself away to
go to school. The little noses nuzzling at the udder, the little bodies
so glad and sure, the little black legs, crooked, the mother standing
still, yielding herself to their quivering attraction—then the mother
walked calmly away.
Jesus—the vision world—the everyday world—all mixed inextricably in a
confusion of pain and bliss. It was almost agony, the confusion, the
inextricability. Jesus, the vision, speaking to her, who was
non-visionary! And she would take his words of the spirit and make them
to pander to her own carnality.
This was a shame to her. The confusing of the spirit world with the
material world, in her own soul, degraded her. She answered the call of
the spirit in terms of immediate, everyday desire.
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give
you rest.”
It was the temporal answer she gave. She leapt with sensuous yearning
to respond to Christ. If she could go to him really, and lay her head
on his breast, to have comfort, to be made much of, caressed like a
child!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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