It was in the spring of last year that I started for a holiday
journey towards some ruins about a hundred miles away. I had
suffered much in the cold weather from fever and broken rest, so
I longed to renew my strength before the heats of summer should
be fully come.
I started on a bright and calm September morning by the main
southward track, hoping to reach a friend's Mission Station on
the eve of the third day.
I reached it then, but I had provoked my enemies by walking in
the chilly hours, and walking to weariness. I was feverish and
spent ere I reached Greenwood's Mission House.
It stood under a towering granite kopje some ten miles only from
the ruins. I had never entered it before. When I last visited
Greenwood, quite two years ago, he had been working on a town
station. He was a dark, lean, rather ascetic-looking person, not
very talkative. I remembered the days when I had fought shy of
him; we had seemed to disagree on so many subjects, and he had
seemed to resent disagreement so intensely. But he had written me
two or three most friendly letters of late, and that nigh?, when
I came to his door so sick and sorry, he seemed to be kindness
itself. I soon revived by his fireside, ate my supper, and smoked
and talked with him to my great content. We were speaking about
roughing it, and told many camp-fire and roadside tales. As I
told and listened, I seemed to be my old self of a year ago once
more, tough and dogged, and rather sinfully contemptuous of
mosquitoes and malaria. Yet I had but a poor night after all, and
the yawning and shuddering chills came on with vigor at Church in
the early morning. I went back to my blankets after an aguish
breakfast, and Greenwood dosed me and told me to go to sleep. He
spoke with authority, and I obeyed. I did not wake up till the
early afternoon. I seemed to have lost much weight in those last
steaming hours, and also, to my joy, the fever.
'I hope I'll sleep well to-night and get an early start to-morrow
after all,' I said to Greenwood. He looked at me rather intently
with his resolute grey eyes.
'The fever is gone for the time,' he said, 'but I don't like the
look of your eyes at all. If I were you, I'd change your room
to-night and sleep in the Hospital.'
'Where's that?' I asked.
'Oh, not very far; half a mile at most. It's Saint Lucy's little
hospice on the hill there across the valley.'
Afterwards, when I went out and sat on the sunny stoep with him,
he showed me the place. I could see a grove of trees standing up
on a near ridge and two or three thatched buildings in among
them; yes, and a white cross surmounting one of these.
'It looks lonely over there,' I pleaded.
'Oh, I'll come with you,' he said. 'I want to tell you the story
of the place before we blow our candle out; it may help the
cure.' So when sundown was near, he and three of his native
retainers started with me for the Hospice of Saint Lucy, carrying
goodly packs every one. I was rather dubious about that
expedition.
'I hope it's warm there,' grumbled I to myself. 'If Greenwood's
as strong as a horse, I am not so just now. I wish he'd camp at
home in peace.'
However, I tried to look interested as they made ready for us to
go and delighted, as we started away.
Just as we went across the narrow valley the sun went down behind
St. Lucy's hill, and bells or gongs answered one another from
either side.
'So you have a bell up there at the Hospital,' I said.
'There's more than you expect to see at the Hospital,' said
Greenwood mysteriously.
So there was. It wasn't a Hospital at all in our wonted modern
sense, but a rather ornate round Church. Outside, it was plain
enough, but within it gave me a sense of studied charm and even
costliness. No drug-covered or dispenser's table was admitted
within its doors, though both were to be found in one of its
neighbor buildings. The main building housed aids to recovery,
but they were of another type. Over the Altar was a life-sized
picture of Saint Lucy, golden-haired and blue grey-eyed, with
great splendor of shapeliness and stature, and real English
apple-blossom cheeks. She came along a rocky path through an
African forest; she was smiling, and had a far-shining lantern in
her hand. You could single out the trees in the forest, there was
the crimson-flowered tree yet leafless, and the wild fig-tree in
full leaf and cluster, and the wild orange-tree; the wild acacias
and the cactus trees were growing among the stones above. Far off
in the distance, at the back of the picture, there were dim
cliffs and pale sands and waves breaking in the bright star-light.
The time was meant to be cock-crow. At least it seemed so, for a
red cock was perched on a tree-pole in the foreground of the
picture, crowing with a will. In the sky were many stars. The
quarter over the sea whence the Saint came was of excelling
brightness. There the morning star hung in a haze of glory.
The Altar itself was of granite slabs and masses. Before it burnt
a purple-glass lamp, hung by chains of native smithy-work, rather
incongruously heavy, I thought. But who was I to cavil at this
jewel of a shrine in our wilderness?
'Where are we to sleep?' I asked.
'Here, before the Altar,' said Greenwood solemnly.
Even as he spoke his house-boy came in with hushed feet, and
began to spread out our rush mats and many-colored blankets. Then
we went into the dispensary hut, and had our supper and many
pipes together, while the native boys chatted and chewed roasted
monkey-nuts in the hut beside us. I felt very hungry and happy
and healthy generally that night, and we sat at our table long,
and then smoked far into the hours of darkness. But, though he
told me many tales, Greenwood would not tell me the tale of the
place, however much I begged him to do so. That was kept for the
Shrine itself. That was not as other tales.
We kept up a good fire, for the night was a cold one.
The talk turned on pilgrimages at last; we spoke of many Shrines,
of old-time ones and of others in the heyday of their youth
still. Greenwood talked well on that subject. Was the aura of his
own Saint in the air of that dispensary? He talked with a
passionate faith about more than one Shrine, that left me almost
breathless.
Then we argued about the Pilgrims' Way in Kent, as to where it
was that most pilgrims forded the Medway, and about certain
homely Kentish legends.
Suddenly he rose and went to the door. He looked out on the
mighty vista of sable earth and spangled sky.
'The moon is just going down and you ought to be sleeping,' he
said. 'And remember there is my tale still to tell.'
So we went to the Church. We had one candle between us there.
Moreover, the purple lamp was burning, its quaint cup of wire-gauze
averted doom from many self-immolant flies. We knelt beneath it,
and he said the Prayers of the Shrine, then our own prayers
followed then he began to tell:
'I was coming back from England twenty months ago and I chose to
come by the East Coast. It is a beautiful way to come. I saw
Zanzibar, where there are many hopes and memories. I slept two
nights far out of the city there, in a grove of palm trees. Then
the boat came back from the mainland and I went aboard again.
'We started for a four days' voyage or so, to Beira. She came
aboard at Zanzibar, I think. Some one told me this, when I asked
about her afterwards. But I was never really conscious of her
presence till the second night of our voyaging. Then we met at a
Concert in the Third Class, that I had strolled down the deck to
patronize. To my shame I was traveling second, while she was in
the crowded family of the third. I went and spoke to her.
'A child had had a bad fall from some steps, and she was
mothering him. It was a lovely and pleasant thing to see how she
did it.
'He should wake up without much pain,' she said, with a smile, at
last. She handed the boy to his own admiring mother. Then she
turned to me, for I had been asking after him.
'She began to talk about our common work. "I want to climb on a
new boat at Chinde, and go the way of the Lakes," she said.
'Are you going to teach?' I asked.
'"I hope I may teach at whiles," she said, "But I am sent first
of all to heal."
'She told me about her hopes for her work.
'"They tell me I have healing hands," she said. "I have a seed-grain of
faith, I think, and that is the secret of them."
'I saw her only for a few moments. I will try to tell you or
rather to show you what she looked like, when I have ended my
story. She enlightened me not a little. I saw how lame a thing my
own journey was my leisurely dawdling back to my work. This girl
came as it were on wings, with power in her heart and will, that
would take no denial but God's. Her few words as we walked up and
down the well-deck were words that burnt and shone in the cold
dark. I am talking about things as I saw them just then. As a
matter of fact, I believe it was a blazing night with a moon at
the full, and stars dropping over one another. I remember that I
slept on deck afterwards. I had a sort of Midsummer South African
Christmas picnic feeling (up till cock-crow, when the fever that
had dogged me that month came again). It was really a consummate
night. But as she talked, she made it seem cold and dark, her
words were so radiantly kind.
'T think we talked about Saint Vincent of Paris mostly, and of
men that had carried in their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus;
and of the imitation of Jesus in India and Africa. Then she said
"Good night!" and was gone.
'Next day that return of fever blurred my new visions of the
Light. Yet I was to see her again. An hour before we came off
Chinde, she asked leave to come up on to our second-class deck
and to bid me "Good-bye."
'I was lying in a deck-chair, my hat tilted over my eyes, under
the morning sun. She was suddenly beside me and speaking to me.
She gave me a watchword out of that confident ending of Saint
Mark, to which, some people, who have their misgivings, attach so
little credit. It was this, "They shall lay hands on the sick and
they shall recover." Then she prayed for me, lifting up her
healing hands. And she held out to me a tiny flask that I might
anneal myself, "For that is your own office," she said.
'My head had defied sleep, but now sleep came apace. It seemed to
me it came breathing about me with the light gusts of wind. I
slept, nor did I know when she said "Good-bye."
'When I awoke the sun was westering. Some passengers had
trans-shipped for Chinde four hours or more ago, a man told me.
She was gone, and I was well. No, not well in one way, but mending.
That is all or almost all of my tale.'
He had told it reverently. Towards the end of the telling, he
himself seemed to wander as he told.
'What was she like?' I asked after a silence.
'She was much like that picture of Saint Lucy,' he said.
'I found a man in the third class, who had taken a really fine
photo of her, not a little snapshot. I had helped him with a
sketch of the voyage he was writing for some magazine, and he was
pleased enough to print me another copy. I sent it home that
month. A friend painted me that panel. I suggested that the name
of the Saint should be Lucy, it was on Saint Lucy's day she had
said "Good-bye." The picture came a day or two before this
Midsummer. He has done wondrously well, I think, if you remember
that he never saw her.'
'How do you know that he never saw her?' I asked.
'Yes, you may well say that,' he said. 'I sometimes think that he
had seen her, even as I. He has painted something of her light
and spirit. Look how she threads' that forest by night!' He held
the candle near, then he pulled it away.
'Forgive me! How can you see her duly by this light? You must
have a real session before her in the morning.'
I awoke early, but not too early, as it seemed to me. Dawn was
growing very bright, and spring seemed to be in the air that came
from the doorway. I sprang up and looked out. Light that was
already almost flame kindled the east. The leaves of the grove
about me had their spring colors on. There was quite enough
illumination to show how brilliant and tender they were ruddy and
green and mauve, and bronze that was almost gold. Day was coming
fast and so was Spring. I turned within and lit the candles on
the Altar. The purple lamp was burning low. I knelt down, and saw
Dawn and Spring, aye, and Summer too, in that picture. Eastern
light was streaming from that lantern Saint Lucy held. It was of
coral and silver set with pearls. Eastern light was in her happy
face. You could see even in that cock-crow dusk in the forest,
how the fig-tree and all the trees were stirring for Spring and
Summer. I took note now that Saint Lucy's wreath was of orchard
leaves and blossoms. I lifted up my thanksgiving there and then,
as the first sunbeams shone about me, for the rest and the light
that I had found, found at last for good as I hope in sultry and
weary Africa.
Soon we were kneeling at the morning Sacrifice, then we went out
and broke our fast in the sunshine, sitting on rocks by the wood
fire. How hungry I was in that hill's pure air!
When he had done, Greenwood showed me some of the workings of the
Shrine. A young mother, filleted and stately, brought her baby to
him. Almost naked but roped with beads, the boy hung in the pied
sheep-skin at her back. Greenwood folded a handkerchief that he
had brought from the Altar about his dusky head. It was of faded
blue and silver. Then he said prayers to the Father and to
Christ, and again to both of them, for the prayers of Saint Lucy
and that other.
'It is not good to drug children so young, is it? He asked the
question as though defending himself.
'I think this may soothe him better than a powder.'
He told me how he had found that kerchief wrapped about his own
head on a certain sunny day when he lay sick aboard ship. 'It was
hers,' he said, 'handkerchiefs and aprons are Bible remedies.'
Other pilgrims or patients came to him after that mother with her
child. He persuaded three or four of them to carry letters to the
doctor in the town. But he prayed for these too, and signed them
with oil from the Shrine lamp, ere he trusted them to his
friend's salves or surgery. By and by came three young men with a
boy. He was stricken and mad, they said. He had come home from
work in a distant town last month. Now he would stay speechless
for hours. He would wander far by day, and brood over the fire by
night.
'Let him stay if he will,' Greenwood said. 'Let him wait in peace
here, and eat and sleep his fill, if he so desires. If he shall
sleep in the Holy Place a few nights, who can say what wonder
Christ may do?'
The boy seemed to be an old friend of his, and stayed quietly by
him. His companions started off joyously down the hill, one of
them playing on the marimba. 'This is Merrie England come again,'
said I. 'Did not an unburnt Lollard upbraid the bagpipe din or
other music of pilgrims long ago? Wasn't that "lewd losel" told
by the Kentish Archbishop how useful such music might be say if a
pilgrim struck his toe on a stone?'
'There are many pilgrims at this Shrine,' said Greenwood smiling.
'I am glad about it. I think she would be glad if she knew.'
'Where is she?' I asked. 'Doesn't she know?'
'I have tried hard to track her,' he said. 'Not a trace have I
found. I have asked our missions, I have asked the White Fathers.
I have asked Africans and Scots and Dutch and Portuguese. But she
has gone on her way out of sight.'
'She has done some work here,' I said.
'Yes,' he said, 'Angel or Saint, Faith Healer or Revenante from
Paradise, she has worked wonders here. Do you know, there is a
simple native cure I have ever so much faith in? It comes from
the root of a tree. Have not some men and women the same sort of
virtue in their wills and hands that trees have in their roots? I
seem to see men and women such as Father John of Kronstadt and
this my Saint Lucy of the Ship even as trees walking.
The outstanding virtue of my patroness was surely in her blossom,
and in the fruit that blossom can yet bring forth. "As the apple-tree among
the trees of the wood" I found her. I sat down under her shadow for
those moments of time. And now, and all my days of grace, will her fruit
be sweet to my taste.'