Fish On Friday

If I could draw, I would introduce Cousin Willie by drawing you a picture of his shoes. And then you could probably guess what the rest of him looked like. But unfortunately I cannot draw, and much as I should like to describe Cousin Willie economically, I despair of ever being able to indicate the character of his shoes by mere words and sentences. I should exhaust myself finding them epithets.

They were typical old man’s shoes, with broken in-steps and tattered linings, having neither tongues nor laces, but extending uninterruptedly up to his shins. Many seasons of wear had squashed them out of their original shapes and relaxed their textures till they wore as many wrinkles as a naked turtle. They made little pleasant noises when Cousin Willie walked, like percussions from a cushion or squeezings of wind through a sponge. “Plosh! Plosh!” they whispered as they slithered along in the service of their master’s feet, each an unpolished, unpresentable integument of pliable, adaptable leather, in which Cousin Willie’s heel snuggled contentedly, his great toe swiveled luxuriously, and his sole was at peace.

Some dictionaries (not The Oxford) call the kind of shoes I am describing “romeos.” I balk at the name. But not because I cannot find it in The Oxford Dictionary. For if Cousin Willie wore the certain variety of low shoes I wear myself, I should insist (albeit by a narrow New England provincialism) on calling them “oxfords,” even though there are no oxfords in The Oxford Dictionary.

Nor am I afraid of the word “romeo” because it sounds sentimental. I believe nothing is worth writing about which is not sentimental. But because it might sound a bit ludicrous. After all, the subject of this story is seventy-six years of age. And he is not ludicrous. He is intensely exquisite and dignified. I am taking a liberty in calling him Cousin Willie. To go further and stick his feet in a pair of romeos would be facetious. It would be disrespectful. And I should rather cut my old gentleman’s legs off and send him rolling through the rest of this story in a wheel-chair than have you take him as a joke. This is not a humorous story. On the contrary, it is going to try to be pathetic. And because I, who write it, know beforehand how it is going to end, I shall fail to see anything funny in what you, who read it, may want to laugh at before you bid Cousin Willie goodbye.

And now, having abandoned my protagonist at the bottom, let me begin with him at the top. And if I am not delayed too long in describing the upper and middle parts of him, I may gradually work down to his shoes again. But it is imperative at this point in my prelude that I say something about Cousin Willie’s hair.

Cousin Willie had white hair. He had lovely white hair. At least so Miss Lucy said. But again I see I am in difficulty. I dare not allow a certain frail spinster to enter this narrative until her proper time. And this is not her proper time.

“Not yet, Miss Lucy!” I whisper, as I see her trying to tiptoe out of my typewriter ahead of her cue; “I am sorry, but I must shoo you out of my sentences for the present. I want to save you till later, if you please. I shall let you know when my story needs you, and then you may come back again . . . ” Her ghost hesitates for a moment on the edge of my paper, shrugs its shoulders bewilderedly, floats back and disappears behind the rubber roller of my lettering engine, and evaporates in a zing!

And therefore, because I cannot think of (and much less write about) Cousin Willie’s lovely white hair without at the same time thinking of Miss Lucy, in order to avoid her now with security, I feel I must leave my hero with only his extremities described, and get on to telling you how I happened to meet him.

I knocked him down on a sidewalk in Lourdes, that’s how I happened to meet him. It was Our Lady’s Lourdes, of course, Lourdes of the Pyrenees in Southern France, whither I had gone on a fifteen dollar excursion from Paris.

I remember the street and the sidewalk vividly. It was the first small street to the left as one, going towards the Grotto, walks away from the bridge across the River Gave: a narrow, dingy byway, famous for its statue stalls and pious knickknack emporiums; bristling with trinket tinkers and medal merchants, crowded with rows of small shops devoted to semi-sanctimonious enterprises like “the rosary-bead business” and “the holy-water-bottle industry.”

The afternoon had just passed twilight and was darkening into nightfall. Cousin Willie came shuffling along carrying a candle and a jug. He was on his way to deposit the jug at his pension, and thence to join his lighted candle to the torches of a thousand other pilgrims, already gathering in the main thoroughfare of Lourdes, and soon to march to the Basilica in one of the magnificent night processions.

The street in which I encountered him was not a street accurately. It was more of an alley, congested with noisy traffickers and jostling pilgrims. Cousin Willie was trying to find his way out of the alley, and I was trying to find my way into it. It may well be that the contrariness of our thoughts was the reason why each failed to notice the oncoming of the other. We collided. And he, the craft of lesser tonnage, collapsed, slipped, and sat down with a thud. His candle blew out. His jug exploded on the curbstone. And a precious pint of miraculous water splashed on his trousers and trickled sacrilegiously into the gutter.

Cousin Willie, subsiding on the pavement, looked up at me without the slightest sign of resentment. “Sorry!” he explained, promptly and politely. “I’m extremely sorry Very stupid of me not to have looked where I was going.”

I knew at once, even apart from the language and the soft-palate tones of his voice, the nationality of my opponent. He was most surely an Englishman. No one but an Englishman could have regarded a grave embarrassment so lightly and commanded such immediate composure and courtesy. This is his breeding, his tradition.

Naturally, when I scrutinized my victim I became deeply humiliated, both at having injured one so helpless, and at having obtained forgiveness so cheaply. If Cousin Willie had scolded me I should have felt the situation less keenly. I tried hard to think of something decent to say by way of apology. Finally, after an awkward silence, I managed to enunciate this much: “My dear sir, I cannot tell you how sorry I am. It was my fault that you fell. I insist that you admit it was my fault. And unless you do, I shall leave you sitting there in the gutter.

Cousin Willie smiled. “Very well,” he replied quietly, “suppose we share the blame? We’ll each take half of it. I should have looked where I was going. And you shouldn’t have knocked me down. And now, will you please give me a hand and help me to arise?” Whereupon I picked him up, straightened him, stretched him, brushed and investigated him, sponged his clothes with my handkerchief, examined his joints, patted his back, shook his hand, and asked his name.

I discovered that, in my rashness, I had bowled over the following distinguished personage: Colonel William Burrows, sometime of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria’s, South African Legion, now retired . . returning from a farewell holiday with old friends in England . . . journeying back all alone to his home in distant Rhodesia, in order, as he said, to make his will, settle his estates, and die . . . a University man (Downside, and Balliol College, Oxford), and, matrimonially as well as academically, a bachelor . . . a cavalier, and a devout Catholic, who had arranged to stop at Lourdes en route to Zululand, and visit the Rock of Massabieille, and see the famous field and the holy fountain, and chivalrously pay his respects to the spot where Queen Mary, Mother of God, once held her rendezvous with little Miss Soubirous . . . desirous incidentally of recommending to Her Majesty’s kind intercession his soul’s salvation, and a few temporal annoyances, chief of which he wished to mention his aching feet, which were crippled with rheumatism.

“I have a most intolerable rheumatism in my feet,” said Colonel Burrows, as he went on introducing himself to me. “Look at the miserable shoes I have to wear!”

I did look at them. Very carefully And I think the reader will find in the early parts of this chapter sufficient indications to show that I have not forgotten them.

The outcome of this unfortunate incident was nothing but good fortune. For Cousin Willie and I, after a short but intense scrutiny of each other, decided to become good friends, such good friends that, during the three days of our mutual sojourn in the little Village of Miracles, we became inseparable.

It was well that Cousin Willie found me, because he needed me. He turned out to be even more helpless than I had at first imagined. He was really very feeble and managed to keep his body active and erect only by sheer willpower and effort. What devotional folly had led him to take the long journey to Lourdes alone, I could not at that time decide. Anyhow, while he was with me, I became his cicerone, interpreter, valet, and guardian angel all rolled into one. I woke him in the morning, steered him down the right street to Mass, steered him back the right street to breakfast, walked him to and from the Grotto in our intervals of prayer, pulled him out of the way of trolley cars, bought him tobacco, matches, pipe-cleaners, medals, postcards (and wrote them), and was in general most handy and indispensable.

In return for these services it was my privilege to explore, through the medium of walk-chats, tea talks, and coffee-conferences, the interior life of an old gentleman of beautiful culture and exquisite sensibilities; wise, witty. spiritual, perilously near to being holy; simple in his prayers, soldierly in his faith, boisterous in his courage, and gentle in his thoughts towards God and man.

On our second afternoon together, Cousin Willie and I went to the great square in front of the Basilica to watch the solemn blessing of the sick. This ceremony, held in the open air, marks the crowning event of a visit to Lourdes. It is the pilgrims’ hour of most fervid intercession, when the blind, the halt, and the maimed are taken from the hospitals, arranged, litter to litter, in a large quadrangle, and wait for the public prayers in their behalf, and for the procession of the Blessed Sacrament. During this service occurs, under Our Lady’s auspices, the final appeal to God to relieve these poor sufferers of their infirmities.

The sick pilgrims, upon their arrival at Lourdes, are carried from the train to the Medical Bureau, where the doctors examine them and make records of their ailments. Then they are assigned to the infirmaries for care, food and shelter.

After this begins a series of devotional observances lasting two or three days. The invalids are brought to the Grotto for a personal dedication to Our Blessed Mother. They light candles at her shrine. They drink the water that flows under the Grotto from the wonderful spring which Bernadette was directed to discover during one of the apparitions. The water from this spring is piped to bath-houses and gathered in stone basins, and in these the sick are bathed. It is to be noted that nobody who bathes in these waters ever carries away from them any contagion, despite the fact that one and all are immersed therein irrespective of the virulence of their sores or the unpleasant character of their diseases.

It may happen in the course of this preliminary ritual, that someone’s malady is either alleviated, or even entirely cured. If so, the then-called miraculé (a delightfully appropriate word, utterly French, and uncoinable in English) is examined again by the doctors for a verification of the cure. If it is found to be authentic, the client is requested to come back again in a year’s time for a confirmation of the completeness and permanence of the recovery.

But the statistics show that it is during the last festival, namely the solemn procession of the Blessed Sacrament, that Our Lady’s intercession is likely to be most potent and a miracle most likely to occur. And little wonder that this is so. For the solemn blessing of the sick may be called, not irreverently, a “challenge” to God’s pity. His suffering children are made a spectacle to Him as He passes in Eucharistic guise. He is constrained to pause at each cot and bless each sufferer, and to acknowledge each human affliction by individual recognition. Thousands are watching, and the honor of His Virgin Mother is at stake. Our Lord will be heedless to cure at His own peril.

The preparations for this general benediction begin an hour ahead of time, with much hubbub and confusion. Bells ring. Men run in the streets. Dogs bark. Birds twitter. The whole town gets alive with excitement. Villagers and pilgrims hurry from their homes and their hotels. They march in crowds to the gate of the Basilica enclosure.

The commercial element in Lourdes (and it is considerable) is kept sedulously outside this enclosure. The candle hawkers (old ladies in black shawls) stand at the entrance to the precincts reserved for prayer, and emit their stream of mercenary mumblings as the pilgrims pass in. Just outside the gate too, one is surprised and amused to find rows of hucksters selling — of all things in the world — sticks of vanilla. Why vanilla? Everyone asks this question. And why here? What connection can such an article of food have with either miracles or Mariolatry!

Cousin Willie, whose mind is both reverent and inventive, settled this problem immediately, by deciding (and whispering to me) that there must be some mystical significance attached to vanilla: a spice symbol perchance, borrowed from the prophecies of the Old Testament, which foretell the glories of the Virgin Mother. But later in the evening when we procured a Bible and rummaged through odds and ends of Scripture texts, and examined hagiographical tidbits referring to balsam, myrrh, aloes, and the like, we had to abandon his theory. Neither he nor I could find any mention of vanilla in Holy Writ, nor any passages containing the slightest vanilla flavor.

My distraction in regard to these vanilla vendors was more profane. I had never known, till that day, that vanilla could exist other than in liquid form. I remembered it only in terms of a semi-fragrant bottle in my mother’s pantry, a drop from which, stirred into a cake or a pudding, made it either smell better or taste better, I forget which. I now began to take a deep interest in vanilla, and to wonder in what category of food elements to place it. Was it a nut? Or a plant? Or the by-product of coal-tar or molasses or something of that sort? And for pity’s sake, how did they manage to solidify it and shape it into sticks? . . .

I paused in my orisons (Cousin Willie and I were reciting the Rosary as we marched through the Basilica Gate) to make a mental note of vanilla as a problem to be investigated further. Characteristically I have not since bothered to look it up in any book of information. And so vanilla, even today, remains to me wholly unaccounted for, a substance as mysterious in its origins as terrapin or tapioca.

The parade of the invalids to their places is a touching sight. Some are borne in beds, some are wheeled in chairs, some are carried in arms. The brancardiers and infirmières (volunteer stretcher-bearers and nurses) transport the sufferers and care for them with the greatest love and tenderness. The faces of these attendants as they go about their work is a study in the beauty of Christian sympathy and compassion. There are other problems in the supernatural evident at Lourdes besides the cure of the sick. There is (a) the problem of their transportation, many with only a spark of life smoldering in their bodies. They come in stuffy coaches and rattling railroad cars from enormous distances, some from Northern France, from Belgium, Germany, Italy, Ireland, England, Norway. Some have traveled even from Australia and America. How do they manage such extravagant journeys in such states of exhaustion?

There is (b) the problem of affection, unbelievable affection, on the part of the well for the sick. Sickness is not attractive. Watery eyes, fetid wounds, foul breaths, twisted limbs, cancerous deformities are loathsome and repelling. And yet at Lourdes, by a strange perversion of natural values, one’s infirmities become one’s title to distinction. The sick pilgrims receive from the bystanders, not pity so much as reverence, admiration, and even envy. Lourdes is a place where one feels ashamed of being in good health and of having no physical hardships to bear with resignation for the love of God.

And finally, (c) there is the problem of the unwarranted patience and silence of the invalids as they lie in the open square, in the hot sun, waiting for the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Surely in the course of these physically tiresome proceedings the pains of some poor unfortunate ought to become unbearable. Someone might be expected to shriek, to rebel, to leap from his bed and be overpowered by the attendants. This does not happen. They suffer, one and all, soundlessly with scarcely any movement, and no complaint.

As the time for the ceremony drew near, the crowd became more and more quiet until, within five minutes of procession time, it was very nearly in a complete hush. There was a tightness in the air, as though masses of spirits were assembling to watch the spectacle. A few pigeons fluttered out of the steeple of the Basilica and circled about in the sky, as if on the lookout for the Dove whose arrival was expected at any moment.

Promptly on the stroke of the hour, two acolytes emerged from the church door, followed by candle-bearers, censer-bearers, a group of priests and monsignori, a bishop, and finally, under a canopy carried by four stalwart peasants, a priest carrying the Blessed Sacrament. We all settled on our knees, bowed our heads, and watched and waited.

The first person to be blessed was an old man with a stick, sitting in a chair. To those of us who were having “our first Lourdes,” this first blessing was a high-water mark in devotional excitement. Benedictio Dei omnipotentis . . . Patris et Filii . . . et Spiritus Sancti . . . descendat super te . . . et maneat semper, spoke the priest as he elevated the Monstrance in the form of a cross. The poor old sick man blessed himself . . . He gripped tightly on his stick . . . Was he cured? . . . Was he going to get up and walk? . . . Yes! . . . No, it seemed not! . . . Yet how did we know? . . . Maybe he was going to wait . . . Maybe he did not want to shout out at once . . . In order not to interrupt the procession . . . Are you cured, old man? . . . Are you all well again? . . .

In the meantime I had paid no attention to the fact that the priest had advanced down the line and had already finished blessing a half a dozen more sufferers when I turned to follow him again with my eyes. The priest was a tall, thin man and looked very ill himself. Monstrances are heavy, and the physical hardship entailed in raising and lowering one several hundred times in the course of an afternoon is very great. I pitied the poor priest. There were lines of suffering and fatigue already in his face.

By this time the procession had passed all the semi-invalids and had arrived at the beds of the desperate cases. Men and women in skeleton form, wrapped in sheets and blankets, heard the sound of footsteps, saw the glare of candles, smelled the odor of incense, and knew in some sad, delirious way that the Blessed Sacrament was passing.

Inch by inch the procession advanced. Hopeless cases became such a common sight that one soon failed to be surprised at beholding humanity in any state whatsoever of degradation or misery Occasionally some poor suppliant in the line of march stood out conspicuously: a young man with his head swathed in bandages through which his nose alone protruded; or a pretty little German girl of eight or nine years, with an ulcerated leg, wearing her First Communion dress, a white veil, and a wreath of roses.

There was no hurry and not the slightest sign of uneasiness on the part of the Benediction officials, despite the fact that the prayers for a cure were being defeated. The Blessed Sacrament moved on and on in its persistent, snail-like journey, and over and over again the priest chanted his monotonous incantation. Little by little our minds began to surrender all expectation of a miracle. We stopped thinking of these pilgrims as petitioners wanting to be made well, and began to contemplate them as holocausts being offered, as victims brought here to be immolated.

At last, after more than an hour of continuous intercession, the ultimate bed was reached. The benediction prayer was recited for the last time. The priest retired to the steps of the Basilica for the Singing of the Tantum Ergo and the final blessing. He then marched with his attendants into the church; the door closed after him; and the festival of faith was over.

Not a single cure had been obtained, as far as we could see. Not one. Slowly and patiently the sick were wheeled back again to the hospitals. The crowd dispersed, the villagers to their homes, the tourists to their hotels. And the Grand Esplanade was left deserted. The pigeons might now return from the steeple and flutter again on the ground unmolested . . .

“Are your feet any better?” I said to Cousin Willie as I took him by the arm and proceeded to lead him home to supper, though I could see from the way he walked that they were not.

“My feet!” he replied with amazement as though he had never owned such appendages. “Why, of course, not!” He hesitated for a moment and then added: “But what a travesty of mercy it would have been for Our Lady to have cured my feet and have let those real sufferers go unanswered! Surely it would have been caddish of me to kneel and watch that spectacle and think of my own private infirmities. Don’t you think so?”

I did not answer. But later in the evening as we rested on the bridge on our way home from our night walk, I told him my true reaction to the afternoon’s proceedings. I cannot remember at the present writing what I said to him in full, but I recall that I ended my oral meditation in his presence somewhat in this fashion: “What a revelation it was of the power and dignity and value of the human spirit! Think of the heroisms to which man can be inspired for the love of God! If anyone was humiliated this afternoon it was God who was humiliated. For He stood in the presence of those poor sufferers, showing not one trace of His omnipotence, bearing them no gifts but the naked gift of His divine love. And yet that was enough for them. And they went on trusting and believing and adoring Him just the same, excusing and forgiving Him, rejoicing only that He had passed in their midst, even though it was only to pass them by. We are wonderful creatures, Colonel Burrows. With all our helplessnesses, we are a great people. May God be praised for making us what we are and for giving us a share in a humanity which, even at its zero point, can achieve such splendor and sublimity in the sight of the Most High. May His Kingdom come. For His Kingdom is surely not of this world.”

Cousin Willie did not reply. But as he turned to look at me in the darkness, I saw by the quiet light burning in his eye that he was in possession of deeper and better thoughts of his own.

“Ahem!” said Cousin Willie to me at breakfast on the last day of our stay at Lourdes; and then ‘Ahem!” again. My sensitiveness to his moods was by this time so highly developed that I knew this twofold throat-clearing was the preface to some startling announcement. It was likely to have some of the significance of the double “Amen” in Holy Scripture by which weighty and important statements are introduced: ‘Ahem, ahem, I say unto you.”

I sipped my coffee and waited patiently. Ahem what?

“Would you — ” said Cousin Willie, making precise motions with his lips, “would you like to take a little tram ride with me this afternoon?”

“Tram ride?” I inquired, with an affected lack of interest, seeming only to be amused at the un-American name for street-car.

“Yes,” he replied, and I thought I noticed him redden considerably.

I paused to sip my coffee again, and before I committed myself, indulged in a few private speculations . . . Yes, surely there were “trams” in Lourdes . . . And one could go tramming through the countryside in many directions if one wished . . . But Lourdes itself was so intensely interesting, why lose any of it when our time there was so short! . . . It was like traveling to the Holy Land in order to make a balloon ascension, or running away from the Pyramids in order to get a good view of the sand.

Cousin Willie decided that I had paused long enough and continued: “I should like very much to take a trip to Bagnères-de-Bigorre this afternoon. Ever hear of it?”

“No.”

“It’s about ten miles from here, a pretty little village up in the mountains.”

“What’s there to see in Bagnères-de-Bigorre?”

“Well, I’ll tell you.” And Cousin Willie removed his spectacles and began to clean them. “There are some friends of mine stopping there for the summer. English people. I haven’t seen them for forty years or more. Not since I left England to go to South Africa. They are distant relatives of mine. At least they say they are, though I’ve never bothered to investigate the relationship accurately. I imagine they’re third or fourth cousins or something of that sort. At least they have always called me ‘Cousin Willie,’ and I let it go at that . . . Well, they know I’m here at Lourdes, and they are most anxious to see me. A lot of bother, and I dislike going, but one can’t offend people. I hate to drag you away from Lourdes on my account. But it would be an awfully great favor if you would come with me. You see, these people are all ladies, old ladies, spinsters!” (And he blew his nose.) “You know it’s the devil trying to keep a conversation going with that sort. And of course I’ll have to take tea and answer questions about my stay in Rhodesia and all that sort of rubbish. And there are four of them, four unmarried ladies. I could never manage them all alone. I feel like a cad in asking you to sacrifice any of your time here by coming with me. But will you?”

“All right,” I said as I proceeded to garnish my empty coffee cup with ringlets of cigarette smoke, “I’ll go.” And lucky for Colonel W. Burrows those same little smoke ribbons didn’t sky-write my thoughts at this juncture. Else he would have seen two silky, pale blue spirals of tobacco wriggle sarcastically out of my mouth and silently arrange themselves, letter by letter, into the words YOU FAKER! as they sailed upwards, struck the ceiling, and melted into whitewash. For I was beginning to suspect for the first time the full reason why Cousin Willie had come to Lourdes.

The little tram that elevates passengers from Lourdes to Bagnères-de-Bigorre is unable to manage the whole journey by itself. It requires the assistance of another little tram that meets it half way up the mountain. The first little tram climbs as far as it can, until it contracts an electrical wheeze and falls into a state of mechanical exhaustion: whereupon its gallant companion, the second little tram, takes over the travelers and baggage and carries them upwards for the rest of the trip. It is a roller-coaster route all the way, up hill and down dale, and only after some minutes of this lark-like manner of ascent does one realize that the valley of Lourdes is retreating in the distance and that one is getting nearer and nearer to the Summit of the Pyrenees.

The scenery all the way is attractive; for fixtures there are quaint cottages, pretty fields, a brook, two bridges, and some interesting rock formations; and for incidentals, a flock of sheep, an old woman feeding a hen, and a little girl flying to and fro on a swing. But most fascinating of all the sights en route are the white cows which we saw grazing far above us on the crest of the mountain. The tram conductor pointed them out to us. These white cows, he said, remain on the heights all the year round, and the farmers must climb with their pails to milk them. Nor may they be brought down to lower altitudes without injury to their health. For if they are pastured for any length of time too near sea level, they contract asthma and die. The white cows of the Pyrenees entranced me. I watched them for nearly the whole journey half specters and half clouds as they moved along the skyline jingling their bells. And I marveled at their heavenly genius in selecting as their favorite indisposition, asthma, the most ethereal of all diseases.

“There!” said the second little tram with a sigh of relief as it rounded the last lap of our ascent and rolled us into the station. “There! This is Bagnères-de-Bigorre at last, my dear passengers. At least I hope it is. And if it isn’t, you can get out and walk the rest of the way, for I’ll climb no more mountain this afternoon. I am in a state of collapse. My joints have become disorganized, my batteries have run down, and I feel cardiac murmurings in my motor. Whatever place this is in reality, it’s Bagnères-de-Bigorre as far as I am concerned.”

We all got out and looked at the sign on the station. And, sure enough, Bagnères-de-Bigorre it was.

With the aid of a little kindergarten French, we secured a renseignement from the station master, and a short walk brought us to our ladies, sitting on their veranda and rocking impatiently. They became excited when they saw us, arose in unison, and amidst a cackled confusion of “Well, wells!”, “My, mys!”, “My Goodnesses!”, and “My Goodness Graciouses!”, we were welcomed. Cousin Willie, their lost one, had returned, their prodigal from Rhodesia, their hero from the land of kaffirs and cocoanuts. Unfortunately there was a little extra confusion entailed in finding out who I was. And, to be honest, I do not think I was ever satisfactorily explained.

As we sat down to tea, after a cup and saucer had been added to the tea things in my honor, I could see that my presence amid such a galaxy of old people was a bit disconcerting. For that reason I tried to make myself as neutral as possible in order not to add any false juvenile note to this long-waited-for reunion. I kept all my social graces under cover. I answered questions in the briefest possible manner, and asked none. I was determined not to steal the show from its rightful leading man nor to hamper his performance in any way Every time the conversation threatened to include me as a topic, I steered it back at once into Cousin Willie’s territory. Every time I got the ball, I punted.

And yet I do think I served Cousin Willie, after a fashion, to a very good purpose. For while one pair of spinsters was vacuum-cleaning him with questions, I kept the other pair distracted with small talk at another end of the room. And thus the odds against him were only two to one for the afternoon, instead of four to one as the ladies had anticipated. And by a judicious and well-timed change of seatings, on the excuse of getting a book, or a letter, or a photograph, or some more tea, etc., it came about that each of us entertained a different brace of spinsters every quarter of an hour. And this method, after the manner of a well-regulated bridge-game, gave our hostesses great satisfaction, as there was no time when some one of them was not occupying a full half of Cousin Willie’s attention.

The youngest of the Spinsters was about fifty-five, though she did not quite look it. Indeed there were times when, save for the heavy lines under her eyes, she managed to appear an excellent thirty-five. Her personality resented the burdens imposed on it by a half a century of existence and fluctuated continually in the area of bygone birthdays. She was fifty in her wrinkles, forty in her enthusiasms, thirty in her dress, twenty in her coiffure, and up and down her teens in ideas. Her name was Miss Clara, and we learned that only the afternoon before she had played and won a set of tennis.

Miss Harriet I guessed to be the next youngest, and very charming she was in a purple frock and a white shawl. She was an amiable and sensible sixty, and unashamed of it, in fact insisted on it, somewhat to Miss Clara’s displeasure.

“You know,” said Miss Harriet to Cousin Willie, as she waggled one of her loose-fitting house slippers, “next February I’ll be actually sixty-HUMPH!” and she stopped short when Miss Clara gave her a good poke in the back.

Miss Harriet did not resume her revelation after this rebuff, and so I did not hear what integer in addition to sixty Miss Clara’s elbow had destroyed. But I am glad to leave Miss Harriet at a flat three score, assuring her that I should be prepared to like her at any age.

Miss Alice was indubitably the oldest of the sisters, and even as a spinster she was definitely out of the running. She was edging on to eighty, prim, puckered and picturesque, had interior ailments, loved hot tea, and hated cold draughts, and was wrapping and rewrapping herself up in a warm blanket all the while we were with her.

Miss Lucy, whom I mention last, was somewhere in between Miss Harriet and Miss Alice, nearing seventy I should say, though not imperiled by it. Instantly I liked Miss Lucy best of all. She was a lady of great delicacy, with a lovely face, spiritualized by illness and still retaining memories of its youth. She had gentle blue eyes that shone wistfully and seemed to say to everyone they looked at: “I forgive you!”

So much for our dramatis personæ. And now for our dialogue. My part in it, as I have said, was purely distractive. I talked of Lourdes of course, of Bernadette, and the shabby little cottage where she used to live with her frightened mother and her drunken father. I talked of the pilgrims of all sorts whom one meets in the streets. And I filled out my lines with some stock remarks about Europe in general as it appears to the eyes of a foreigner. Once I laughed out loud at having been forced to make a good joke, the point of which I alone could see.

“And how did Cousin Willie happen to pick you up?” inquired the voluble Miss Clara when she was seated as one of my partners.

“Oh!” I replied with a heavy chuckle, “we ran into each other purely by accident. And it was really I who picked him up.”

Cousin Willie (for, though he was separated from me, I never became so engrossed in my own conversation to the extent of losing him with my ear) was truly magnificent. A little stiff perhaps, and somewhat matter of fact, and excessively modest, but on the whole very impressive. He would not allow his African exploits to be lionized, as though he had gone there as a big-game hunter. And he threw cold water on all attempts to sentimentalize his hardships, as behooves a good soldier. And whenever a pair of feminine eyes attempted to melt him with adulation, his favorite deprecatory expressions were: “A mere trifle!”, “Nonsense!”, and “Tut, tut!”

And was it lonely away off in South Africa all these years? . . .

Nonsense. Of course not. Too much to do.

And did he really associate with real Zulus? . . .

Zulus? Of course. Fine people. A lot of nonsense about their being dangerous. Made the finest servants one could ever imagine. Kept three of them on his property all year round.

OooooH! But wasn’t he sometimes sorry he had left England? . . .

Tut, Tut! Never missed it. Would have liked to return once in a while for a holiday. But certainly not to live there again. Had lost all attraction for the stupid English climate. Preferred by far the warm sun and blue skies of the Indian Ocean.

But why didn’t he write oftener and let people know how he was getting on? . . .

Tosh! Never was much at correspondence. And besides had too many new interests. Had long since passed his rugger and cricket days, and now had new problems to engross him, the civilization and government of the natives for instance, and the problem of their education, physical and mental.

But didn’t he really wish he had never gone there in the first place? . . .

Damn it, no! He didn’t! What a foolish question!

But didn’t he realize that his old friends missed him a lot? And didn’t he remember the happy times they used to have when he was a school-boy and came to visit them for the vacs? . . .

Yes, of course he remembered. But! But one can’t be a school-boy all one’s life, can one? One has to get out and do things, hasn’t one? One has obligations to fulfill, hasn’t one? And enterprises to undertake? And one can’t get things done by thinking in terms of mere sentiment, can one?

No, I suppose one can’t . . . And each spinster when confronted with this unanswerable dilemma indicated her resignation to fate by making a gesture of futility, and sibilating each an individual kind of sigh. Heigh-ho! In four different keys. Three sharps. Five sharps. Four flats. And an A-flat minor.

During one of the many shuffles that occurred in our seating arrangements, I drew as my companions: Miss Harriet, the communicative one, and Miss Alice, the sleepy one. I began to discourse on my newly acquired object of interest, the white cows of the Pyrenees and their strange susceptibility to asthma. Miss Alice obliged by yawning and falling asleep. This gave Miss Harriet a full chance to communicate to me a secret I saw she had been anxious to reveal for some time past.

“Oh, I don’t suppose you heard,” she began with a furtive look around the room, “but Lucy and Cousin Willie were once . . . you know!”, and she crossed her fingers. And drawing her rocking-chair a little closer she said in a staccato whisper: “They were practically engaged. But it broke off when he went away. Later Lucy planned to go to South Africa and marry him and settle there for good, but it never came about. He wouldn’t let her go there to live, and he said his duty wouldn’t let him return. It nearly killed Lucy, though she never speaks about it.”

Thank you, Miss Harriet. You have completely solved a great mystery. How grateful to God we ought to be for the garrulous. They disentangle so many of our problems with their tongues, quite as many in the long run, I believe, as they complicate.

Heaven knows that, once I became armed with this information, I tried every ruse in my power to wheedle the three incidental spinsters into my corner and give Cousin Willie and Miss Lucy a few moments together. I nearly made a fool of myself trying to do so. But these old lovers would not seize an occasion.

I even suggested that I should be glad to wheel Miss Alice out into the garden for a ride in her rolling chair if Miss Harriet and Miss Clara would help me. But this suggestion also went for naught. It turned out that I did give Miss Alice a ride in the garden, but it was Miss Lucy who volunteered to help me, leaving Cousin Willie alone in the house to be grilled further by the remaining Clara and Harriet.

It was in the garden, however, while pushing Miss Alice between a row of high hedges, that Miss Lucy disengaged me for a moment from my task and whispered the significant line I have commemorated earlier in this story. “Don’t you think Cousin Willie has lovely white hair?”

It was nearly five o’clock, and we had to leave. There was dinner waiting for us at our hotel, and there was an Italian pilgrimage, four hundred strong, coming in that night from Genoa, and we did not want to miss seeing its colorful arrival at the station.

Good-bye, Miss Alice! Good-bye, Miss Clara! And Miss Harriet! And Miss Lucy! But Miss Lucy was putting on her hat and coat and was coming with us to the station!

“Nonsense, Lucy.” said Cousin Willie. “There’s no need of your coming. We can find the station quite well!”

But Miss Lucy’s hat had been put on at such a determined angle, one look at it showed us that it had no intention of coming off again under pressure of an argument.

“A lot of bother, Lucy,” continued Cousin Willie. “Entirely unnecessary for you to come.” And I believe he would have kept up this sort of grumbling and whining all the way down to the car if I had not interposed, “We think it’s awfully nice of you to come, Miss Lucy. In fact we want you to come . . . ” That settled him for a while.

So off we marched to the station, myself, my drooping Romeo, and my faded Juliet. My tactics I quickly decided on the way. Upon arriving at the station I should beg leave to go and buy some cigarettes, of which I happened to have at the time a great plenty. And I should take lots of time to procure them. And in my absence, God willing, something decent might occur in the way of a farewell.

So I made them hurry. Miss Lucy in her light coat and hat, carrying an umbrella, and Cousin Willie shuffling along in his shoes. And as we crossed the main street of the village I had the privilege of taking his arm with one hand and hers with the other, and rushing them out of the way of a passing motor car. It was a moment of high excitement for me, and I had great difficulty in not imagining that some of love’s electricity flowed through me on that occasion and found its rightful terminals in the two aching hearts with whom I was in contact.

Whether or not anything tender did happen when I left them at the station and went to make my bogus purchase, I do not know. At least I allowed plenty of time for it to happen, and even read a nocturne of my Breviary in the tobacco store for a good measure of delay. Let us hope and pray some word was spoken, some look given, of which this story can make no mention, some little token that eased if it did not eradicate the pain of a forty years’ separation.

I only know that when I returned I found them chattering about matters most unromantic, some insipidities about the rain and the weather, things damp and uninspiring and miles away from any subject savoring of affection.

Meanwhile our little tram, having had a good rest in a neighboring shed while we were taking tea, was ready to transport us downwards again. All aboard!

“Good-bye, Cousin Willie.”

“Oh, good-bye! Good-bye!”

“Safe journey!”

“Thanks awfully”

“Write and let us know that you got home safely, won’t you?”

“Yes, I may drop a card sometime.”

“I suppose this is the last time we’ll ever see you, isn’t it, Cousin Willie?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Give my love to Mrs. Marshall, won’t you?”

“Yes, I will. Good-bye!”

“And give my love to Adelaide?”

“Yes. Yes. Certainly.”

“And give my love to David?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes. Good-bye.”

“And give my love to . . . ”

And that, dear Reader, was the last of Miss Lucy The last of her forever. Standing on the hilltop. Waving her umbrella.

Cousin Willie never waved back. But I did, as long as I could see her through the tram window.

As we rattled down the mountainside, Cousin Willie and I sat for a long time in silence. I knew he had been deeply moved, but I could not understand why he had been so deliberately frigid and irresponsive to all the overtures of farewell Miss Lucy had offered him. I hoped he was not an attitudinizer, capable of turning an unfulfillable affection into some mean form of spite like a school-girl. No. Surely this could not be so. I thought it best, therefore, to leave him alone, ask him no questions, and attend to my own business. After all it was his heart that was involved, not mine, and he could be counted on to be the best arbiter of its destinies. Only I was sorry, so sorry, Miss Lucy was not there to hear the reverie with which he finally decided to re-open the conversation.

“That was awfully decent of her to come down to the station with us, wasn’t it?” he said at last.

I nodded.

“She’s really the nicest one of those four, did you know it?”

Of course I knew it. And I was delighted to notice that he was employing in her regard a more gentle tone of voice than I had heard him use heretofore.

“And when she was a girl,” he went on, “she was awfully pretty.”

Bumpety! bumpety! bump! went the little tram, adding hideous, unmusical discords to the flow of this fine poetry

“And I suppose I was an awful fool to leave England, eh?”

But how was I to answer that question?

“Oh, by the way.” I said, watching him from the corner of my eye, “I had a nice talk with Miss Lucy in the garden.”

“Oh, did you? What did she say?”

“Nothing in particular,” I replied, pretending to yawn, “except she made a rather amusing remark about you.”

“Oh, I say!” he answered quickly “What did she say about me?”

“She said she thought you had lovely white hair,” I said with great emphasis.

“Go on. Did she really?”

There was another interval of silence.

“I suppose she meant she was surprised to find I had any hair left at all. Wasn’t that it?” he questioned at last.

“Yes, I guess so,” I murmured casually. But I knew I had hit my mark.

“Well, to be honest,” he went on, “I really don’t know how I kept my hair. Never did anything for it in my life, except cold water. And come to think of it, I still have quite a lot, haven’t I? Quite a mystery to know just why some men lose their hair and others keep it, isn’t it?” he added, running his hand across the top of his head.

“Yes, it is,” I answered, reaching and taking hold of my own to make sure it was still there.

But the incident in our whole afternoon’s excursion which was to be most memorable and significant happened in the little village half way down the mountain while we were waiting for a change of trains.

“Would you mind,” said Cousin Willie, “if I ran over to the chemist’s shop to make a small purchase while we’re waiting for the other tram to come?”

The idea of his running over to any place amused me.

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

“No, you wait here and watch for it.”

“I’ll go with you,” I repeated.

“No. You wait here. Please.”

So I let him go. Which was nearly a disastrous permission. For he was gone well over five minutes. The alternate little tram began to appear in the distance. If we missed it there would be no getting back to Lourdes that night. I ran across the street and into the chemist’s shop.

“Hurry up! Hurry up!” I shouted. “What are you doing? What’s keeping you?”

“I’m buying some of this stuff,” he answered sheepishly seeing there was no way to make a subterfuge, “eau de quinine. It’s wonderful for the hair. They make it here in France. And I just remembered. I wanted to get some, as it’s hard as the devil to buy it in Rhodesia because the duty’s so high.”

Nor was that all. In the hotel that night it was necessary, so he told me, to pour some eau de quinine out of the bottle, just a little, so one would be able to take it through the customs free of assessment. And part of the “little” poured out was replaced by a spoonful of Lourdes water, just to help matters on supernaturally as well as naturally.

And thus ended the history of what I believe to be the most interesting temporal favor ever requested at Lourdes, the case of an old Englishman who came thither with foot trouble and went away petitioning Our Blessed Mother to safeguard his hair, under the double auspices of her humble servants, Mlle. Bernadette Soubirous and Monsieur Ed Pinaud.

Cousin Willie and I parted on the train while we were en route back to Paris. He was to go to Marseilles and take the boat for South Africa by way of the Suez Canal. And he left me at a terminal station in Southern France, called Dax. Or maybe it was Pau. I am hazy about the name for my eyes were a bit misty when I looked out to see the name on the signpost. Maybe it was Dau, or even Pax.

“Good-bye,” he said. “Good-bye!” as we stood in the corridor of the train shipping his baggage out to the porter. “Don’t forget to write to me. Here! — I’ll write you my address on this envelope!”

“And I’ll write mine on this,” I said, procuring myself a piece of paper from my pocketbook.

But in the wild confusion, here’s what happened: I put my address back in my own pocket, and he put his address back in his, thus making us unattainable to each other for the rest of this earthly pilgrimage. I did not discover this awful mistake until I got back to Paris.

“Been to Lourdes?” asked an American tourist of me when I returned to my compartment in the train.

“Yes,” I replied glumly

“See any miracles?”

“Yes, a dandy.”

“A real cure?” he inquired with great interest.

“Yes, sir, a very real one. An old man with foot trouble.”

“But was he actually cured?” he persisted. “Did you really see it?”

“I did,” I replied, giving him an enigmatical look. “Of course Our Lady had a little difficulty in managing it.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, first of all she had to stand him on his head.”

He stared at me in blank amazement. Whereupon I took out my Breviary arranged my prayer-ribbons, and began the task of reciting what is known in sacerdotal circles as our onus diei.