It’s not only a loaf of bread and a flagon of wine; it’s the bread of life and the blood of Christ, but not held back from those who starve and thirst for them and doled out by priests on stated occasions; it’s the daily fare of suffering men and women.
It’s so humble, so natural, so friendly; it’s the bread and wine of the poor who ask no more than that they should be left in peace, allowed to work and eat their simple food in freedom.
It’s the cry of the despised and rejected.
It tells you that whatever their sins men at heart are good.
That loaf of bread and that flagon of wine are symbols of the joys and sorrows of the meek and lowly.
They ask for your mercy and your affection; they tell you that they’re of the same flesh and blood as you.
They tell you that life is short and hard and the grave is cold and lonely.
It’s not only a loaf of bread and a flagon of wine; it’s the mystery of man’s lot on earth, his craving for a little friendship and a little love, the humility of his resignation when he sees that even they must be denied him.”
Lydia’s voice was tremulous and now the tears flowed from her eyes.
She brushed them away impatiently.
“And isn’t it wonderful that with those simple objects, with his painter’s exquisite sensibility, moved by the charity in his heart, that funny, dear old man should have made something so beautiful that it breaks you?
It was as though, unconsciously perhaps, hardly knowing what he was doing, he wanted to show you that if you only have enough love, if you only have enough sympathy, out of pain and distress and unkindness, out of all the evil of the world, you can create beauty.”
She was silent and for long stood looking at the little picture.
Charley looked at it too, but with perplexity.
It was a very good picture; he hadn’t really given it more than a glance before, and he was glad Lydia had drawn his attention to it; in some odd way it was rather moving; but of course he could never have seen in it all she saw.
Strange, unstable woman!
It was rather embarrassing that she should cry in a public gallery; they did put you in an awkward position, these Russians; but who would have thought a picture could affect anyone like that?
He remembered his mother’s story of how a student friend of his grandfather’s had fainted when he first saw the Odalisque of Ingres; but that was away back in the nineteenth century, they were very romantic and emotional in those days.
Lydia turned to him with a sunny smile on her lips.
It disconcerted him to see with what suddenness she could go from tears to laughter.
“Shall we go now?” she said.
“But don’t you want to see any more pictures?”
“Why?
I’ve seen one.
I feel happy and peaceful.
What could I get if I saw another?”
“Oh, all right.”
It seemed a very odd way of doing a picture gallery.
After all, they hadn’t looked at the Watteaus or the Fragonards.
His mother was bound to ask him if he’d seen the Embarkation for Cythera.
Someone had told her they’d cleaned it and she’d want to know how the colours had come out.
They did a little shopping and then lunched at a restaurant on the quay on the other side of the river and Lydia as usual ate with a very good appetite.
She liked the crowd that surrounded them and the traffic that passed noisily in the roadway.
She was in a good humour.
It was as though the violent emotion from which she had suffered had rinsed her spirit clean, and she talked of trivial things with a pleasant cheerfulness.
But Charley was thoughtful.
He did not find it so easy to dismiss the disquietude that affected him.
She did not usually notice his moods, but the trouble of his mind was so clearly reflected on his face that at last she could not but be struck by it.
“Why are you so silent?” she asked him, with a kindly, sympathetic smile.
“I was thinking.
You see, I’ve been interested in art all my life.
My parents are very artistic, I mean some people might even say they were rather highbrow, and they were always keen on my sister and me having a real appreciation of art; and I think we have.
It rather worries me to think that with all the pains I’ve taken, and the advantages I’ve had, I don’t seem really to know so much about it as you do.”
“But I know nothing about art,” she laughed.
“But you do seem to feel about it very strongly, and I suppose art is really a matter of feeling.
It’s not as though I didn’t like pictures.
I get an enormous kick out of them.”
“You mustn’t be worried.
It’s very natural that you should look at pictures differently from me.
You’re young and healthy, happy and prosperous.