(IV)
It was the hour of the evening procession and of theBenediction of the Sick.
All day long the man who had lost his memory had gone to and frowith his companions, each wearing the little badge that gave thementrance everywhere; they had lunched with Dr. Meurot himself.
If Monsignor Masterman had been impressed by the social power ofCatholicism at Versailles, and by its religious reality in Rome,he was ten thousand times more impressed by its scientificcourage here in Lourdes. For here religion seemed to havestepped down into an arena hitherto (as he fancied) restrictedto the play of physical forces. She had laid aside her oracularclaims, her comparatively unsupported assertions of her owndivinity; had flung off her robes of state and authority and wascompeting here on equal terms with the masters of naturallaw--more, she was accepted by them as their mistress. For thereseemed nothing from which she shrank. She accepted all who cameto her desiring her help; she made no arbitrary distinctions tocover her own incapacities. Her one practical desire was to healthe sick; her one theoretical interest to fix more and moreprecisely, little by little, the exact line at which natureended and supernature began. And, if human evidence went foranything--if the volumes of radiophotography and sworn testimonywent for anything, she had established a thousand times overduring the preceding, half-century that under her aegis, andhers alone, healing and reconstituting forces were at work towhich no merely natural mental science could furnish anyparallels. All the old quarrels of a century ago seemed at anend. There was no longer any dispute as to the larger facts. Allthat now remained to be done by this huge organization ofinternational experts was to define more and more closely andprecisely where the line lay between the two worlds. All curesthat could be even remotely paralleled in the mentallaboratories were dismissed as not evidently supernatural; allthose which could not be so paralleled were recorded, with themost minute detail, under the sworn testimonies of doctors whohad examined the patients immediately before and immediatelyafter the cure itself. In a series of libraries that abutted onto the Place, Monsignor Masterman, under the guidance of DomAdrian Bennett, had spent a couple of hours this afternoon inexamining the most striking of the records and photographspreserved there. He was amazed to find that even by the end ofthe nineteenth century cures had taken place for which the mostmodern scientists could find no natural explanation.
Ten minutes ago he had taken his place in the procession of theBlessed Sacrament, with the monk's last word still in his head.
"It is during the procession itself," he had said, "that the workis done. We lay aside all deliberate knowledge as the Angelusrings, and give ourselves up to faith."
* * * * *
And now the procession had started, and already, it seemed tohim, he had begun to understand. It was as he himself emerged, afew paces in front of the Blessed Sacrament Itself, walking withthe prelates, that that understanding reached its climax. Hepaused at the head of the steps, to wait for the canopy to comethrough, and his heart rose within him so mightily that it wasall he could do not to cry out.
Beneath him, seen now from the opposite end from which he hadlooked this morning, lay the Place, under a wholly differentappearance. The centre of the great oval was cleared, with theexception of a huge pulpit, surmounted by a circularsounding-board, that stood in the middle. But round this emptyspace rose, in tier after tier, masses of humanity beyond allreckoning, up and up, as on the sides of an enormousamphitheatre, as far as the highest roofs of the highestbuildings that looked on to the space. Before him rose the pileof churches, and here too, on every platform roof and stair,swarmed the spectators. The doors of the three churches wereflung wide, and far within, in the lighted interiors, lay theheads of countless crowds, as cobble-stones, seen in perspective.The whole Place was in shadow now, as the sun had just gone down,but the sky was still alight overhead, a vast tender-colouredvault, as sweet as a benediction. Here and there, in theillimitable blue, like crumbs of diamond dust, gleamed the firststars of evening.
And from this vast multitude, swayed by a white figure within thepulpit, articulate now as the listener emerged, rose up a song toMary, as from one soft and gigantic voice, appealing to HerPresence who for over a century and a half, it seemed, had chosento dwell here by virtue and influence, the Great Mother of theredeemed and the Consoler of the afflicted, whose Divine Son waseven now on His way, as at Cana itself, to turn the water ofsorrow into the wine of joy. . . . Then, as the canopy came out,at an imperious gesture from the tiny swaying figure in thepulpit, the music ceased; great trumpets sounded a phrase; therewas a rustle and a movement as of a breaking wave as the crowdsknelt; and the _Pange Lingua_ rose up in solemn adoration. . . .
As he came down the steps, his eyes quick with tears, he saw forthe first time the lines of the sick in the place to which he hadbeen told to look. There they lay, some four thousand in number,placed side by side in two great circling rows round the wholearena, a fringe of pain to the exultant crowds, in litters laidso close together that they seemed but two great continuous beds,and between them the high flower-strewn platform along whichJesus of Nazareth should pass by. There they lay, all of thembathed to-day in the strange water that had sprung up a hundredand fifty years ago under the fingers of a peasant child, waitingfor the sacramental advent of Him who had made both that waterand those for whose healing it was designed.
And yet not all were cured--not perhaps one in ten of all whocame in confidence. That surely was wonderful. . . . Was it thenthat that same Sovereign Power who had permitted the pain electedto retain His own sovereignty, and to show that the Lawgiver wasfettered by no law? One thing at least was certain, if thoserecords which the priest had examined this morning were to bebelieved, that no receptiveness of temperament, no subjectiveexpectancy of cure, guaranteed that the cure would take place.Natures that had responded marvellously in the mentallaboratories seemed ineffective here; natures that were inert andimmovable under the influence of sympathetic science leapt uphere to meet the call of some Voice whose very existence ahundred years ago had been in doubt.
The front of the long procession, Monsignor saw, had reached nowthe doors of the basilica, and would presently, after making thecomplete round, pour down into the arena to allow the BlessedSacrament to move more quickly. It was an exquisite sight, evenfrom here, as the prelate set foot on the platform and began tomove to the left. The long lines of tapers, four deep, went likesome great serpent, rippling with light, above the heads of thesick; and here and there in the slopes of the crowded spectatorsshone out other lights, steady as stars in the motionless half-litevening air. Then, as he went, slowly, pace by pace, he rememberedthe sick and glanced down, as the music on a sudden ceased.
Ah! there they lay, those living crucifixes . . . . shrouded inwhite, their faces on either side turned inwards that they mightsee their Lord. . . . There lay a woman, her face shrivelled withsome internal horror--some appalling disease which even thescience of these days dared not handle, or at least had not; herlarge eyes staring with an almost terrible intensity, fixed, itseemed, in her head, yet waiting for the Vision that even nowmight make her whole. There a child tossed and moaned and turnedaway his head. There an old man crouched forward upon his litter,held up on either side by two men in the uniform of thebrancardiers. . . . And so, in endless lines, they lay; fromevery nation under heaven: Chinese were there, he saw, andnegroes; and the very air in which he walked seemed alight withpain and longing.
A great voice broke in suddenly on his musings; and, before hecould fix his attention as to what it said, the words were takenup by the hundreds of thousands of throats--a short, ferventsentence that rent the air like a thunder-peal. Ah! he rememberednow. These were the old French prayers, consecrated by a centuryof use; and as he passed on, slowly, step by step, watching nowwith a backward glance the blessing of the sick that had justbegun--the sign of the cross made with the light goldenmonstrance by the bishop who carried it--now the agonized eyes ofexpectation that waited for thei
r turn, he too began to hear, andto take up with his own voice those piteous cries for help.
"_Jesu! heal our sick. . . . Jesu! grant that we may see--mayhear--may walk. . . . Thou art the Resurrection and theLife. . . . Lord! I believe; help Thou mine unbelief_." Then withan overwhelming triumph: "_Hosanna to the Son of David! Hosanna,Hosanna!_" Then again, soft and rumbling: "_O Mary, conceivedwithout sin, hear us who have recourse to thee._"
The sense of a great circumambient Power grew upon him at eachinstant, sacramentalized, it seemed, by the solemn evening light,and evoked by this tense ardour of half a million souls, andfocused behind him in one burning point. . . .
Ah! there was the first miracle! . . . A cry behind him, an eddyin the circle of the sick and the waiting attendants, a figurewith shrouding linen fallen from breast and outstretched arms,and then a roar, mighty beyond reckoning, as the wholeamphitheatre swayed and cried out in exultation. He saw as in avision the rush of doctors to the place, and the gesticulatingfigures that held back the crowd behind the barrier. Then a greatmoan of relief; and a profound silence as the _miracule_ kneeledagain beside the litter which had borne him. Then again thecanopy moved on; and the passionate voice cried, followed in aninstant by the roar of response:
"_Hosanna to the son of David._"
* * * * * * *
It was half-way round, at the foot of the church steps, that theGerman girl was laid; and as the prelates drew near Monsignorlooked rapidly to this side and that to identify her.
Ah! there she lay, still with closed patient eyes and colourlessface, in the outer circle facing inwards towards the pulpit. Adoctor knelt on either side of her--one of them the young man whohad announced her coming into the hall this morning, with arosary between his fingers. It was known to the crowd generally,Monsignor had learnt, that her case was exceptional; but it hadbeen kept from them as to where she would lie, for fear that theexcitement might be too much concentrated.
He looked at her again, intently and carefully--at that waxen,fallen face, her helpless hands clasped across her breast with astring of beads interwoven within them; and even as he lookeddistrust once more surged within him, It was impossible, he toldhimself--in spite of what he had seen that day in spite of thatscore of leaping figures and the infectious roar that more thantwenty times in that short journey had set his pulsesa-beat. . . . He passed her, quickening his steps a little; thenfaced about and watched.
Slowly came the canopy. Its four bearers sweated visibly withthe effort; and the face of the bishop who bore the monstrancewas pale and streaked with moisture from the countless movementshe had made. Behind him came row after row of downcast faces,men and women of every Religious Order on earth, and the tapersseen in perspective appeared as four almost continuous wavinglines of soft light.
There had been a longer pause than usual since the last exultingcry of a sick man healed; and the silence between the cries fromthe pulpit grew continually more acute. And yet nothing happened.
The bishop was signing now outwards over a man who lay next theGerman, with his face altogether hidden in a white andloathsomely suggestive mask; but there was no stir in answer. Thebishop turned inwards and signed over a woman, and again therewas no movement.
"Thou art the Resurrection and the Life," cried the voicefrom the pulpit.
"_Thou art the Resurrection and the Life,_" answered theamphitheatre, as the bishop turned again outwards.
Monsignor heard him sigh with the effort, and with theconsciousness too, perhaps, of who it was that lay here; helifted the monstrance; the eyes of the girl opened. As hesigned to left and right she smiled. As he brought themonstrance back she unclasped her hands and sat up.
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