The morning was gray and I sat by the sea near
Palos in a gray mood. I was Jayme de Marchena,
and that was a good, old Christian name.
But my grandmother was Jewess, and in corners they
said that she never truly recanted, and I had been
much with her as a child. She was dead, but still
they talked of her. Jayme de Marchena, looking
back from the hillside of forty-six, saw some service
done for the Queen and the folk. This thing and
that thing. Not demanding trumpets, but serviceable.
It would be neither counted nor weighed beside and
against that which Don Pedro and the Dominican found
to say. What they found to say they made, not
found. They took clay of misrepresentation, and
in the field of falsehood sat them down, and consulting
the parchment of malice, proceeded to create.
But false as was all they set up, the time would cry
it true.
It was reasonable that I should find the day gray.
Study and study and study, year on year, and at last
image a great thing, just under the rim of the mind’s
ocean, sending up for those who will look streamers
above horizon, streamers of colored and wonderful
light! Study and reason and with awe and delight
take light from above. Dream of good news for
one and all, of life given depth and brought into
music, dream of giving the given, never holding it
back, which would be avarice and betraying! Write,
and give men and women to read what you have written,
and believe —poor Deluded!—that
they also feel inner warmth and light and rejoice.
Oh, gray the sea and gray the shore!
But some did feel it.
The Dominican, when it fell into his hands, called
it perdition. A Jewess for grandmother, and Don
Pedro for enemy. And now the Dominican—the
Dominicans!
The Queen and the King made edict against the Jews,
and there sat the Inquisition.
I was—I am—Christian. It
is a wide and deep and high word. When you ask,
“What is it—Christian?” then
must each of us answer as it is given to him to answer.
I and thou—and the True, the Universal Christ
give us light!
To-day all Andalusia, all Castile and all Spain to
me seemed gray, and gray the utter Ocean that stretched
no man knew where. The gray was the gray of fetters
and of ashes.
The tide made, and as the waves came nearer, eating
the sand before me, they uttered a low crying. In
danger— danger—in danger, Jayme
de Marchena!
I had been in danger before. Who is not often
and always in danger, in life? But this was a
danger to daunt.
Mine were no powerful friends. I had only that
which was within me. I was only son of only son,
and my parents and grandparents were dead, and my
distant kindred cold, seeing naught of good in so
much study and thinking of that old, dark, beautiful,
questionable one, my grandmother. I had indeed
a remote kinsman, head of a convent in this neighborhood,
and he was a wise man and a kindly. But not he
either could do aught here!
