“Not one bit. I’ll wait till I have seen one.”
Madame Gagnier shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly.
“How shall you see, having no eyes at all?”
Nancy’s brown eyes snapped in defiant contradiction of the slight put
upon them. It was no part of her plan to be drawn into theological
discussion. However, theological discussion being forced upon her, she
had no mind to give way. Motherless from her childhood, Nancy Howard had
never been trained in the purely feminine grace of suppressing her
opinions.
“I not only have eyes; but I have a little common sense,” she answered
aggressively.
The next instant, she was conscious of a sudden wave of contrition.
Madame Gagnier unclasped her wrinkled hands and crossed herself
devoutly.
“Then may the Good Sainte Anne open your eyes!” she responded, with
gentle simplicity. “You carry her name. Pray that she take you under her
protection, and work this miracle in your behalf. She is all-gracious,
and her goodness has not any limits at all.”
Impulsively the girl rose from her seat on the ground, crossed to the
stile and dropped down on its lowest step.
“Madame Gagnier, I was very rude,” she said, with equal simplicity.
Then silence dropped over them, the silence of the country and of the
past. Forgetful of the letter she had let slip to the ground, forgetful
of the coarse, mannish boots beside her own dainty ties, the girl
allowed her gaze to wander back and forth across the view. It had grown
so familiar to her during the last nine days, interminable days to the
energetic, society-loving American girl who had chafed at her exile from
the early gayeties of the awakening season in town.
Fifty feet away stood her temporary prison, a long, narrow stone house
coated with shining white plaster. Above its single story, the pointed
roof shot up sharply, broken by two dormer windows and topped with a
chimney at either end, the one of stone, the other of brick. The palings
in front of the house were white, dotted with their dark green posts;
but, the house once passed, the neat palings promptly degenerated into a
post-and-rail fence guiltless of paint and crossed with a stile at
important strategic points connected with the barn. For one hundred feet
in front of the house, the smooth-cropped lawn rolled gently downward.
Then it dropped sharply from the crest of the bluff in an almost
perpendicular grassy wall reaching down to the single long street of
Beaupré, two hundred feet below. The crest of the bluff was dotted by an
occasional farmhouse, each reached by its zigzag trail up the slope;
but, in the street beneath, the houses met in two continuous, unbroken
lines, parallel to that other continuous line of the mighty river. The
river was mud-colored, to-day; and the turf about her was browned by
early frosts; but the Isle of Orleans lay blue in the middle distance,
and, far to the north, Cap Tourmente rested in a purple haze. At her
feet, the white sail of a stray fishing-boat caught the sunlight and
tossed it back to her, and, nearer still, the gray twin spires of Sainte
Anne-de-Beaupré rose in the clear October air.
“Mother of the Holy Virgin, protector of sailors, healer of the
faithful, patron saint of the New France.” Dame Gagnier was rehearsing
the attributes of the saint to herself in her own harsh _patois_.
The girl interrupted her ruthlessly.
“What an enormous train!” she exclaimed.
“Eh?”
Nancy pointed to the long line of cars crawling up to the station beside
the church.
“Long train. Many cars,” she explained slowly.
Dame Gagnier’s eyes followed the pointing finger.
“Yes. It is a pilgrimage,” she answered.
The girl scrambled to her feet.
“Really? A pilgrimage! I thought it was too late in the season. Do you
suppose there will be a miracle?” she questioned eagerly.
Under the wide hat, the eyes lighted and the wrinkled lips puckered into
a smile.
“Mam’selle does not believe in those miracle,” Madame Gagnier reminded
her.
Nancy’s shoulders shaped themselves into an American travesty of the
inimitable French shrug.
“I am always open to conviction,” she announced calmly.
“Eh?”
“I am going to see for myself.”
“Mam’selle will go to church?”
“Yes; that is, if you are sure it is a pilgrimage.”
“What else?” In her turn, Madame Gagnier pointed to the train whence a
stream of humanity was pouring into the square courtyard of the
Basilica.
“You are sure? I don’t want to break my neck for nothing, scrambling
down your ancestral driveway.”
“Eh?”
For the thousandth time during the past nine days, Nancy felt an
unreasoning rage against the deliberate monosyllable that checked her
whimsical talk. In time, it becomes annoying to be obliged to explain
all one’s figures of speech. Abruptly she pulled herself up and began
again.
“Unless you are sure it is a pilgrimage, I do not wish to walk down the
steep slope,” she amended.
“Yes. It is a pilgrimage from Lake Saint John. My son told me. It is the
last pilgrimage of the year.”
Nancy clasped her hands in rapture.
“Glory be!” she breathed fervently. “I am in great luck, to-day, for
they said that it was too late in the year to expect any more of them.
The Good Sainte Anne is working in my behalf. Now, if she will only
produce a miracle, I’ll be quite content. Good by, Madame Gagnier!”
Madame Gagnier nodded, as she looked after the alert, erect figure.
“Mam’selle does not believe in those miracle,” she said calmly. “Well,
she shall see.”
The girl stooped to pick up her letters. Then swiftly she crossed the
lawn and entered the house. Outside a closed door, she paused and tapped
softly.
“Come in.” The answering voice was impersonal, abstracted.
Pushing open the door, Nancy entered the little sitting-room and crossed
to the desk by the sunny window looking out on the river.
“Daddy dear, are you going to come with me, for an hour or two?”
The figure before the desk lost its scholarly abstraction and came back
to the present. The student of antiquity had changed to the adoring
father of a most modern sort of American girl; and his eyes, leaving the
musty ecclesiastical records, brightened with a wholly worldly pride in
his pretty daughter.
“What now?”
“A pilgrimage. A great, big pilgrimage, the last one of the year,” she
said eagerly. “I’m going down to see it. Surely you’ll go, too.”
He shook his head.
“Oh, do,” she urged. “You ought to see it, as a matter of history. It is
worth more than tons of old records, this seeing middle-age miracles
happening in these prosy modern days.”
“Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré isn’t Lourdes, Nancy,” he cautioned her.
“No; but the guide-books say it is only second to Lourdes,” she answered
undauntedly. “Anyway, I want to see what is happening. Won’t you come,
really, daddy?”
His eyes twinkled, as they looked up into her animated face.
“Nancy, I am sixty-five years old, and that trail up the hill is worse
than the Matterhorn. If you follow the zigzags, you walk ten miles in
order to accomplish one hundred feet; if you strike out across country,
you have to wriggle up on all fours. I know, for I have tried it. It
isn’t a seemly thing for a man of my years to come crawling home, flat
on his stomach.”
She laughed, as she stood drumming idly on the table.
“I am sorry. It is so much more fun to have somebody to play with.
Still, I shall go, even if I must go alone.”
She started towards the door; then turned to face him, as he added
hastily,—
“And, if you see Père Félicien, ask him when I can examine those last
records by Monseigneur Laval. I shall be here, tell him, about ten days
longer.”
Nancy’s face fell.
“Ten mortal days! Oh, daddy!”
“Yes, I shall need as much time as that. I prefer to finish up my work
here, before I go on to Quebec.”
“And how long do you mean to stay in Quebec?” she asked.
The minor cadence in her tone escaped her father’s ears. He patted the
papers before him caressingly.
“It is impossible to tell. Four or five weeks, I should say. That ought
to give me time to gather my materials.”
Nancy loved her gay home life; but she also loved her father. She tossed
him a kiss as she left the room; nevertheless, the smile that
accompanied the kiss was rather forlorn and wavering. Once outside the
door, however, she freed her mind.
“Ten more days here, and a month in that hole of a Quebec! It will be
Thanksgiving, before we get home. Think of all the fun I shall be
losing!” She pinned on her hat with a series of energetic pries and
pushes. Then she added fervently, “Oh, Good Sainte Anne, do get up the
greatest miracle of all, and produce something or somebody that shall
add a little variety to my existence! I’ll give fifty cents to the souls
in purgatory, if you’ll only be good enough to rescue my soul from this
absolute boredom of boredoms.”
Surely, never was more unorthodox prayer directed upward from any
shrine. However, the Good Sainte Anne chanced to be in a propitious
mood, that day.