to go to its miracles by electricity! I believe I’ll go, too. It might be rather interesting to see what an American miracle is like.”
Ticket in hand, he boarded the train, already moving out of the station. He had some difficulty in finding a seat to his liking, since a man of finical habits objects to having two bundle-laden habitants in the same seat with himself. However, by the time he was sliding along under the bluff at Beauport, with the Saint Lawrence glistening on his right, he decided that the morning was ideal for a country ride. By the time the train halted opposite the Falls of Montmorency, he had forgotten the ubiquitous students at his table, and, as he entered into the fertile valley of L’Ange Gardien, he came to the conclusion that chance had led him wisely. Just how wisely, as yet he was in ignorance.
It was still long before midday when the train drew up at Sainte Anne station, and Barth stepped out upon the platform. Then in amazement he halted to look about him. Close at hand, an arched gateway led into a broad square garden, bounded by gravel walks and bordered on two sides by a row of little shrines, aged and weatherbeaten. On the third side stood the church of the Good Sainte Anne, its twin gray towers rising sharply against the blue October sky and flanking the gilded statue of the saint poised on the point of the middle roof. Around the four sides of the courtyard there slowly filed a motley procession of humanity, here a cripple, there one racked by some mental agony, the sick in mind and body, simple-hearted and trusting, each bringing his secret grief to lay at the feet of the Good Sainte Anne. Mass was already over, and the procession had formed again to march to the shrine and to the holy altar.
Barth’s eyes roved over the shabby procession, over the faces, dull and heavy, or alert with trust; then he turned to the rose-arched figure borne on the shoulders of the chanting priests, and his blood throbbed in his veins, as he listened to their rich, sonorous voices.
“A pilgrimage!” he ejaculated to himself. “And now for a miracle! May the saint be propitious, for once in a way!”
Following hard on the heels of the crowd, he pushed his way through one of the wide doors, gave a disdainful glance at the huge racks of crutches and braces left by long generations of pious pilgrims, looked up at the vaulted roof, forward to the huge statue of Sainte Anne half-way up the middle aisle, and drew a deep breath of content. The next minute, he choked, as the stifling atmosphere of the place swept into his throat and nostrils.
“Oh, by George!” said Mr. Cecil Barth.
However, once there, he resolved to see the spectacle to the end. Furthermore, Barth was artist to the core of his being, and those sonorous voices, now ringing down from the organ loft above, could atone for much stale air. A step at a time, he edged forward cautiously and took his place not far from the altar rail.
The students of his table would have found it hard to recognize the haughty young Englishman in the man who knelt there, looking with pitiful eyes at the forlorn stream of humanity that flowed past him. Was it all worth while: the weary fastings and masses, the scrimping of tiny incomes for the sake of the journey and of the offering at the shrine, the faith and hope, and the infinite, childlike trust, all to culminate in the moment of kneeling at the carved altar rail, of feeling the sacred relic touched to one’s lips and to the plague-spot of body or of soul? And then they were brushed aside with the monotonous brushing of the relic across the folded napkin in the left hand of the priest. For better or worse, the pilgrimage was over. It was the turn of the next man. Brushed aside, he rose from his knees to give place to the next, and yet the next.
Just once the monotony was broken. A worn pair of crutches dropped at the feet of the statue; a worn old man, white to his lips, staggered forward, knelt and received the healing touch on lip and thigh and knee. Then, with every nerve tense, he struggled to his feet and made his toilsome way to the outer world, while the priests recorded one more miracle wrought by the Good Sainte Anne. Then the monotony fell again, and became seemingly interminable.
At length Barth could endure it no longer. Rising impatiently, he forced his way down the crowded aisle and came out into the air once more. After the dim, dark church and the choking cloud of the incense, the rush of sunshiny ozone struck him in the face like a lash, and involuntarily he raised his head and squared his shoulders to meet it. He loitered along the gravel pathway, watching the habitants who, their pious pilgrimage over, were opening their crumpled valises and spreading out their luncheons in the cloisters to the south of the church. Then, tossing a coin into the tin cup of the blind beggar in the gateway, he came out of the court and crossed the road to the little hillside chapel built of the seventeenth-century materials of the old church of Sainte Anne. But the spell of the place was still upon him; in his mind’s eye, he yet saw the endless line of pilgrims, bowing and rising in unbroken succession. With unseeing gaze, he stared at the rows of carts heaped with their ecclesiastical trinkets, at the stray figures lifting themselves heavenward by means of the Scala Sancta Chapel, and at the line of white farmhouses poised high on the bluff beyond. Then, yielding to the spell of the kneeling figures, of the incense-filled air and of the chanting voices, he turned and hurried back again to the church.
By the time he reached the steps once more, the procession was flowing swiftly outward, and the little platform at the doorway was crowded with excited figures. Barth tried this door and then that, in a futile endeavor to regain his old place near the altar rail; but again and again he was forced backward to the very verge of the steps. Then an unduly tall habitant elbowed Barth’s glasses from his nose. He bent down to pick them up, was jostled rudely from behind, lost his balance and rolled down the steps where he landed in a dusty, ignominious heap in the midst of a knot of women.
During one swift second, it seemed to Barth that the vast statue of Sainte Anne had tumbled from the roof, to dazzle his eyes with her gilding and to crush his body with her weight. Then the dancing lights and the shooting pains ended in darkness and peace.
CHAPTER THREE
Out of darkness and peace, Mr. Cecil Barth drifted slowly backward to the consciousness of the glare of the sunshine, of a babel of foreign tongues and of two points of physical anguish, centering respectively in a bruised head and a sprained ankle. He closed his eyes again; but he was unable to close his ears. Still too weak to make any effort upon his own behalf, he wondered vaguely when those clacking tongues would cease, and their owners begin to do something for his relief.
“Stand out of the way, please. He needs air.”
The words were English; the accent unmistakably American. Barth pinched his lids together in a sturdy determination not to manifest any interest in his alien champion. For that reason, he missed the imperative gesture which explained the words to the crowd; he missed the anxious, kindly light in Nancy Howard’s eyes, as she elbowed her way to his side and bent down over him.
“You are hurt?” she questioned briefly.
Even in this strait, Barth remained true to his training. He opened his eyes for the slightest possible glance at the broad black hat above him. Then he shut them languidly once more.
“Rather!” he answered, with equal brevity.
The corners of Nancy’s mouth twitched ominously. It was not thus that her ministrations were wont to be received. Accustomed to fulsome gratitude, the absolute indifference of this stranger both amused and piqued her.
“You are American?” she asked.
This time, Barth’s eyes remained open.
“English,” he returned laconically.
Again Nancy’s lips twitched.
“I beg your pardon. I might have known,” she answered, with a feigned contrition whose irony escaped her companion. “But you speak French?”
“Not this kind. I shall have to leave it to you.” In spite of the racking pain in his ankle, Barth was gaining energy to rebel at his short sight and the loss of his glasses. It would have been interesting to get