leaden arm, one cannot help feeling how utterly dead a dead man looks,
an impression enormously deepened, as a rule, by the circumstances of
the last days. For in these his external, his spiritual activities have
been, of necessity almost, set aside, and perhaps temporarily forgotten
in the paramount appeals of his body itself. Now this organ, now that,
must be attended to, supported, cleansed, stimulated, implored, as it
were, to fulfil its duty towards the struggling economy of the whole.
And as an almost inevitable result their slender responses, their final
refusals, have obsessed both patient and friends to the exclusion of
everything else. The bodily case, so long taken for granted, and now so
fast giving way, has become no longer a subordinate, but the predominant
factor in its owner's entity. So that when the body, _Imperator et Dux_
of these later hours, at length lays down its sceptre, it's a small
wonder if all else has appeared to die with it. Nor for a time can the
formulae of the churches seem anything but unreal, however humbly a
schooled faith may try to accept their verity. The dead thing beneath
the sheet seems to weigh down the balance with a fact too stark for
disputation. Of the earth earthy, it is committed to the earth,
resolving presently into its elements--and who shall tell its number any
more?
Between mere friends, the friend taken and the friend left, this bodily
dissolution has perhaps a less grim significance, or makes, at any rate,
a smaller demand on faith. We loved our friend for his ways, his wit,
his kindliness, his character, and not very particularly for his cast of
feature or mould of physique. But where friendship has allied itself
with passion, where the actual flesh has meant much, where souls have
spoken, not only in sight and speech, but in touch and fast embrace, the
death of the flesh must necessarily seem to involve so infinitely
more--enough almost to justify mediaeval thought in demanding, for its
consolation, a belief in the resurrection of the body. And as a result
the well-meant advice of physicians and friends must appear at these
times to be entirely inadequate--I was almost going to say
impertinent--because it must necessarily be only half informed.
And yet I am not sure that we, standing at a distance (and perhaps even
because of this), have not, after all, the real comfort in our hands. To
you, from whose close touch the alabaster box has slipped, its breaking
has seemed to mean the end of all things. You were so near to it. And
how irreparable was its fracture no eyes but yours could tell. So what
can we others say to you that can be of any value in your sorrow?
Well, we can at least say this--that its perfume is still upon the air,
its real gift to us and our great and permanent possession. It may be
easier for us--his mere friends--to declare thus that we haven't really
lost him. But given a little time it will become possible even to you,
who were heart of his heart. And if there's no older--and perhaps
colder--truism than this, yet it has a very sound and, I believe, an
actually physical basis. For if we grant, as we needs must, that the
material body is ever changing, cell replacing cell by a continuous
process of wasting and repair, so that the substance containing us
to-day is by no means identical with that which contained us, as it
were, yesterday, why then the cells that called out for the physical
sight and touch of those other cells that surrounded him we loved must
necessarily pass also upon their journey, and with them, to a very great
extent, their anguish of unsatisfied desire. This is why, I think,
nothing becomes more absolutely obliterated than a dead passion that has
been merely bodily; and why also, in most other cases where passion has
been a factor, the diminution of grief must be regarded as a completely
natural process and one that implies no shadow of disloyalty. It merely
means that the sense of loss has been transferred to another and more
spiritual plane, where, lo! it even appears at times to have been
scarcely a loss at all; but instead a withdrawal, so obviously transient
as to be itself an evidence of some certain, if incomprehensible
reunion. With his memories so thronging, with the visible and abiding
evidences of his activities so implicit in the growth of his successors,
how little, after all, has become the value of the vessel that contained
him! Am I right? Isn't it going with you somehow in this fashion?
But, dear me, if your power of sleep were not returning to you so
rapidly, you would be imagining this some subtle form of prescription by
epistle.
And that was one of the best bits of news in your letter, besides being
the chief reason why you mustn't, I think, come back to town just yet,
even at the risk of disappointing Hilary and Norah. For Sleep's a fickle
goddess when she once goes wandering, and the way to woo her home is not
to woo her at all. Seek her not, and she will come stealing back to you
round the corner to know the reason why. And there's no place like the
country and some quiet garden therein in which to declare your war of
independence.
For, as I told you before, sleeplessness _per se_ has never killed
anybody yet; and where nothing but the rising and setting of stars, and
the opening and closing of flowers need call for your attention, you can
very comfortably afford to snap your fingers at it in defiance. But in
town it would be different. Your days would become, in spite of
yourself, so automatically exacting that you would of necessity demand
respite from your nights--the very demand that, just at present, you
mustn't be obliged to make. At Stoke, on the other hand, it doesn't
matter (and the more you insist on this the better), it doesn't matter a
bit where, when, or how much, you sleep. The very air of the place is a
far too bewitching, and incidentally a quite adequate, substitute;
while for dreams you have the whole cycle of field and garden husbandry
spread out before your eyes, as little changing as the downs themselves,
and like them pretty nearly "half as old as time." So watch it for a
year, day in and day out, and leave the turmoils and telephones of
London to such unfortunate and envious friends as P. H., of medicinal
memory.
As regards the girl you sent up to me from the village last Friday, I
have taken her into one of my wards at the Hospital, where I fancy a
little careful dieting will soon set her right again. At the same time I
may take the opportunity of examining the defaulting organ by means of a
very ingenious instrument just devised by two of my junior colleagues.
It's a toy--it's going to be much more than that--that would have
delighted your husband's heart, and by its means, down a bent tube,
inserted through her mouth, fitted with a tiny electric lamp and
reflectors at the angles, I shall be able not only to peep into her
stomach, but to survey it as thoroughly and particularly as I am now
able to inspect her tongue. Even so do the youngsters show us the way!
Yes, you are quite right. Anaemia, dyspepsia, gastric ulcer seem to be
the special afflictions of the under-housemaid. And it's the damnable
habit of providing her with "kitchen" tea, and "kitchen" butter, and
"kitchen" food of all sorts that is largely responsible for this, not
only directly, but indirectly, in that it tempts her to indulge in
various kinds of unhealthy in-between meals. Surely the servants who
work for us, and feed us, and keep us clean, should be at least as well
and as carefully fed as ourselves, even if they wouldn't be quite happy,
perhaps, to sit at our own tables. And the careless (and I'm afraid
doubtful) ladies who think otherwise should be made to undergo a spell
of domestic dieting in their own establishments.
Esther and Molly, who are at home, join me in sending you their very
best love and hopes for a near-at-hand complete recovery; and, if you
can really put up with them, nothing will make Tom and Claire happier
than to spend a week or two of their summer holidays at Stoke.
Your sincere friend,
PETER HARDING.
P.S.--You must try to forgive me for this rambling and rather
inconsequent letter, but I have been both inflicting and enduring, for
the last ten days, a superfluity of full-dress lectures. So I have been
writing to you, as a result, in my mental shirtsleeves.
XVII
_To Miss Sarah Harding, The Orphanage, Little Blessington, Dorset._
HOTEL MODERNE, LOURDES,
_June_ 7, 1910.
MY DEAR SALLY,
I have just encountered one of those strange half-accidents that crop up
like rocks in the quiet stream of one's everyday life just where a rock
is the least likely to be. You turn the bend from Tuesday into
Wednesday, and hey presto, before you know what's happened, your little
canoe has been shot out of the main current into some unsuspected
channel, whence it emerges presently as from a waking dream.
Last week as I went into the club between an afternoon at the hospital
and two evening visits in Kensington, I met Bettany, of whom you may
perhaps have heard me speak. A quite successful Government official, he
contrives also to edit one of the leading Roman Catholic newspapers and
incidentally to organise with conspicuous ability periodical pilgrimages
to various Continental shrines. He is a man who has always interested
me, partly because he has seemed to me to possess in a very marked
degree one of the strongest and most challenging characteristics of his
Church--the habit, even in matters of religion, of completely
dissociating the man from his function. A ladder for the faith of other
people need not necessarily have any faith of its own--and be an
extremely serviceable ladder for all that. In his particular case, a
belief in the miraculous powers of those relics and waters to which he
enables the faithful so comfortably to travel, is not, I think, _de
fide_--demanded by his Church. In any case he does not possess it, but
regards the whole phenomenon through his gold-rimmed spectacles with an
entirely amiable, and of course very discreet, scepticism. At the same
time his talent for organisation and his unique knowledge of Continental
hotels and railways are entirely at the disposal of his more credulous
brethren. And his name must be known in this connection to many
thousands of Catholics on both sides of the Channel.
On this particular evening he told me that he was extremely busy making
the final arrangements for what promised to be the largest English
pilgrimage that has yet travelled to Lourdes. And then, remembering
suddenly, I suppose, that I was a doctor of medicine, he sat bolt
upright and said, "By George, you're the very man that can help me." For
it seemed that there were so many invalids going out with the party--at
least forty, he told me--some of whom were in a very bad way, that it
had appeared desirable to take a medical man in case of emergencies upon
the long journey. And did I know of anyone who would care to go? He had
already made some inquiries, he said, among Catholic medical friends,
but hadn't as yet found anyone who had been able to undertake the
duties. He was not in a position to offer anything more than travelling
expenses; and he was beginning, as a consequence, to feel rather
doubtful about finding a man in time. It was not essential, he
considered, that the accompanying physician should be himself a
Catholic, provided that he was reasonably sympathetic; and then, reading
my thoughts, I suppose, he asked me if I should be sufficiently
interested to make the little trip myself.
Well at first, of course, this seemed quite out of the question; but on
looking through my engagements I began to think that with a certain
amount of arrangement it might become possible after all. We were to
leave Charing Cross at ten o'clock on Friday morning, and would be home
by the following Thursday night. And it was to be quite understood that
I was coming not as an official, but only as a visitor who would be
willing, if necessary, to render aid _en route_--all of which goes to
account for the address upon my notepaper, and the fact that I seem at
this moment to be very much more than eight hundred miles from Harley
Street.
Joining the train at Charing Cross, it was quite obvious to me that a
very considerable proportion of the party was Irish--the sing-song
western accent was everywhere--and that a comparatively large number of
priests would be travelling with us. Most of these I have since
discovered to be genial, even hilarious, souls, drawn, as it appears,
from every stratum of society, and differing, as a consequence, very
greatly both in real education and superficial polish.
It was not until we got on board at Folkestone that I had a first
opportunity of becoming acquainted with the sick people of the assembly;
and by this time I was already conscious of being surrounded by some
curious, indefinable atmosphere, that was walling us away from what to
me, with my half-Protestant, half-scientific upbringing, represented
the everyday world. I doubt if many of my fellow-pilgrims felt this. But
I am certain that the other passengers on the boat did. And it was both
odd and a trifle amusing to observe the blank expressions upon numerous
well-fed and monocled countenances on their way to a normal Paris. Yet
from my own point of view I had to admit that there was a good deal of
excuse for them. For we might all, as it seemed to me, very easily have
stepped out of the Middle Ages.
Of the more obvious invalids there were none, as far as I could see, who
stood the smallest chance of benefiting, in a material sense, from their
visit to Lourdes. There were two blind girls, both cases of congenital
organic disease--and who both chanced, by the way, to be among the very
few sufferers from sea-sickness. There was a little boy from a Sussex
village, a case of infantile paralysis, brought by his mother in the
fervent hope, as she told me, that Our Lady would use him as a means to
convert an extremely Nonconformist community. There was an older girl,
similarly affected; and an elderly man, travelling quite alone, in
almost the last stages of cancer of the throat. With this poor fellow,
who was almost too weak to stand unaided, I had a long and very
pathetic conversation. He knew himself to be past all human aid, and was
journeying from his home on the east coast to the shrine upon the Gave
as to his last anchorage upon life. And I doubt, even so, if he had any
real belief in its efficacy for himself. But his journey, a really
enormous effort for a man in his condition, would at any rate show that
he had had courage enough to make the trial. His is the only case that
has given me cause for any immediate anxiety, and were it not for his
extraordinary pluck and will-power I should be more than doubtful about
getting him home alive.
Of the other invalids, none were sufficiently apparent to disclose
themselves to me in a cursory tour round the ship with Bettany; and
after making the poor cancer patient as cosy as possible in the special
train that was waiting for us at Boulogne, I repaired to the very
comfortable carriage reserved for us, and shared an excellent lunch with
Bettany, his lady secretary, and another member of the committee. The
journey to Paris was uneventful, and after manoeuvring round its
southern suburbs, we found ourselves about seven o'clock in the Gare
d'Orleans, where a portion of the refreshment-room had been reserved for
our dinner. During this meal I was introduced by Bettany to the Bishop
who is leading the pilgrimage--one of those rare men of whose essential
saintliness one becomes instantly aware, yet a man, too, of abundant
strength, and one, as I have since found out, capable of ensuring, with
the profoundest personal humility, the utmost tribute of respect to the
high office that he represents. I suppose every Church contains such
men. It is at any rate pleasant to think so. But not all are wise enough
to make them bishops--and missionary bishops at that.
The same train left Paris with us about nine o'clock on the long journey
to Lourdes; and after some desultory conversation we made ourselves
comfortable for the night. Fortunately, since our train was not of the
corridor type, the sick persons seemed to settle down pretty easily, and
the chief impressions that remain to me of the journey are a peep into a
cool and cloudless sunrise over some vineyards between Poitiers and
Angouleme and a very satisfactory _cafe complet_ at Bordeaux. Two or
three times during the morning, both before and after reaching this
place, we were jeered at by onlookers at various wayside stations, who
had read the inscription _Pelerinage_ upon our carriage; and one or two
of these had even gone so far as to throw stones. They were reminders,
I suppose, that here in Lourdes seem almost incredible, of the enormous
extent to which the anti-clerical movement has permeated elsewhere in
France. The latter part of our journey, climbing slowly into the
Pyrenees, was enlivened for us by the presence of the Bishop, who had
given up his own carriage to some indignant Irish pilgrims that had been
so unfortunate as to have spent a sleepless night. Haymaking was already
in full swing in these steaming valleys, with men and boys and
bare-legged, brown-faced women all backs down over what seems to be a
very plentiful crop.
* * * * *
I have just here been tapped on the shoulder by an immaculately
apparelled American Catholic, who has just joined the pilgrimage from
Florence. He had learned, he told me, that I was a physician willing to
oblige. He suffered a little from gout, he said, and then proceeded to
pose me with the rather difficult question as to how often he ought to
take the waters.
I explained to him that, as far as I knew, these have none but an
ethical value--a reply that obviously puzzled him.
"You mean," he inquired at last, "that it's ENtirely a matter of faith?"
"Precisely," I answered, and his brow cleared a little.
"Do you think I might have a Seidlitz powder to go on with?" he asked.
* * * * *
We arrived at Lourdes at about four o'clock on Saturday afternoon, after
just thirty hours' travelling, and landed into a seething tumult of
departing pilgrims, bullock-wagons, carriages, and electric trams.
Losing sight of Bettany, I found myself looking vaguely round for some
kind of conveyance, in company with the Bishop and his chaplain; and
between us we managed to secure also a seat for our poor
fellow-traveller from Essex, for whom we afterwards discovered a
moderately quiet bedroom in our hotel.
After tea, the Bishop asked me to accompany him in a stroll round the
town and shrine, during which I learned a little about Lourdes, and a
good deal about my companion. Half-way between the plains and the higher
ranges of the Pyrenees, Lourdes itself lies in a valley, bisected by the
Gave, a tumbling mountain stream that supplies the holy water to the
grotto and the _piscines_, or invalid baths. The town itself, with its
narrow, winding streets, strung, as it were, between the
fourteenth-century chateau on the one side and the nineteenth-century
church that surmounts the shrine, on the other, is quite the most
remarkable combination of mediaevalism and modernity that I have seen;
while its crowded, ever-changing population must be, I suppose, the
saddest, oddest, and perhaps the most unique in both the hemispheres. As
we walked down towards the shrine, we met returning most of those who
had gathered round the great square for the daily blessing of the sick;
and passing through them we must have heard, I should think, almost
every dialect of Europe, Flemish perhaps predominant, since this was the
last day of a great Belgian pilgrimage, but German, Italian, English,
Spanish, and of course French, at nearly every step.
Every now and again, too, some ardent man or woman, seeing the big
amethyst ring on my friend's finger, would kneel down to kiss it and
receive his blessing, caring nothing for his difference of language and
nationality, and everything for his holy office in their common church.
Once or twice he smiled gently when they had gone their fervent way,
clasping their votive candles or little bottles of sacred mountain
water, and once I ventured to press him a trifle as to his personal
faith in the Lourdes miracles. But he was a statesman, as I discovered,
no less than a saint, and would confess to no more than a belief that
these dear people obtained perhaps a score of spiritual to each merely
temporal favour. And surely these were after all the better?
The actual grotto, where fifty-two years ago the little Bernadette saw
her visions of the Blessed Mary, lies now about a hundred yards from the
river's edge, along which a palisaded embankment has been built, that is
apt however, after sudden storms, to be pretty often under water. It is
really a cave set in a large rock around which, one above the other,
have since been built three churches, the topmost, with its tall and
slender spire, being perhaps the most prominent landmark for a good many
miles around. With its walls polished by the elbows and fingers of
countless thousands of pilgrims, this little cavern contains an altar
before which, in the open air, are ranged several rows of seats for
worshippers at the shrine, and where, as I afterwards learned from a
disappointed Irish priest, it is considered a very special privilege to
say Mass.
Next to the grotto are the baths, where the sick are immersed, and from
which bottles of the holy water can be carried away to all parts of the
world; and to the left and above this is the great church, the lowest
and largest of the three that now surmount the rock. The entrance to
this church stands upon a broad terrace above the immense open
amphitheatre, about which, in a circle some half a mile in
circumference, gather the sick people and their helpers and relations
for the afternoon passing of the Host. It is at this ceremony that the
majority of the miracles take place, of which, I suppose, the crutches,
splints, spinal jackets, and other surgical appliances that hang rusting
among the wild geraniums over the entrance to the grotto are to be taken
as partial evidences.
There were still some poor sufferers waiting outside the _piscines_, and
a few others praying before the grotto; and pausing for a moment to
watch them and the various passers-by, one could not help being very
forcibly struck with the all-pervading atmosphere of pity. Sights that
elsewhere would have been veiled from the daylight are here frankly
exposed, not to a kind of shuddering, if sympathetic horror, but as
pitiful, broken flowers to be gathered up, and laid with prayers upon
the altar of mercy. We concluded our little tour with a visit to the
Bureau des Contestations, the offices where the doctors attached to the
grotto--one of them an Englishman--receive and classify the histories of
the cures, examine the alleged _miracules_, deprecating the excited
allegations of some, postponing their verdicts upon others, and
recording what seem to them, among a host of claims, to be genuine cases
of Divine interposition. Both the doctors present when we arrived, and
to whom Bettany, who had joined us, now introduced me, were extremely
courteous and only too anxious to lay before me all the material at
their command. Both, as I could see at once, were men accustomed to deal
with human nature of the type and under the conditions that Lourdes
presents, and it was therefore with very great diffidence that I found
myself even mentally criticising their results. Nevertheless it is true,
I think, that nothing approaching to ordinary, exact scientific
observation, as the modern medical world understands it, is carried out
at Lourdes; I doubt indeed if it would be possible; and I saw no
instance, either then or later, of a Lourdes cure that could not be
explained upon the observed and established lines of mental suggestion,
or, apart from this, could bear a thorough cross-examination. Needless
to say, the two doctors, both ardent and devout Roman Catholics,
entirely disagreed with me, and assured me that after twenty years at
the shrine they were only the more convinced of Our Lady's blessed and
material favours. And perhaps, after all, it is merely a question of
terminology.