ANOTHER SURPRISE
From Parkminster I went to Hindhead and I was delighted with the
cordial reception given me by Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Castle. Their home,
almost hidden from the road, looked down into a valley, and then away
across a moor that stretched up and over a long, high hill.
I was not the only guest in the house. There was a private chapel
upstairs, and they had been given the rare privilege of having the
Blessed Sacrament reserved in the little tabernacle. Here I said Mass
each morning for the household, and nearly all went to Holy Communion.
The following morning I went up to Bramshott to see Father Knox. He had
now a beautiful chapel built near the C. W. L. hut, under the patronage
of St. Peter and St. Paul; so now the Catholics were no longer obliged
to use the garrison church hut. After I had talked with him for a
while, he told me to go alone to the hospital, which was just a few
hundred feet away. Somebody wished to see me in Ward 18, bed 20. “You
will see what you will see,” said Father Knox enigmatically, as he
followed me to the door.
This is what I saw after I had entered Ward 18 and had walked a few
steps down the aisle. A young fellow was sitting up in bed 20, his
finger marking the place in a little black book with red edges, his
eyes smiling a friendly greeting. But who was he? I approached still
nearer. Then I recognized him. It was the Spanish lad who had come to
Father Knox’s room about one year and a half before to tell him that he
had lost the faith and was no longer a Catholic.
He seemed glad to see me and held my hand after he had shaken it. I
also was very pleased to see him, for the strained look that I had
noticed when I first met him had gone from his eyes, and instead there
was a look of real joy there. The little book he held in his hand was
“The Imitation of Christ.”
“It is all right! It is all right!” he kept repeating, as he smiled up
into my face. “I have gone to communion. I have made peace. I am very
glad.”
I, too, was very glad. I had thought of him often and had asked other
priests to bring him back. And here he was now, safe in his Father’s
house! The strayed sheep had come back into the fold. Not for a long
time had I felt so happy! I remember now, as I returned to Anthony
Place that day, while walking along a secluded part of the way,
twirling my cane around my fingers as the drum major does at the head
of a procession.