Dawn of All by Robert Hugh Benson
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Robert Hugh Benson >> Dawn of All
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"Go on, father."
"Finally, there are those physical states that have practically
nothing to do directly with the nervous system at all. Take a
broken leg. Of course the cure of a broken leg is affected by
the state of the nervous system, since it depends upon the
amount of vital energy, the state of the blood, and so on. But
there are distinct processes of change of tissue that are bound
to take a certain fixed period. You may--as has been proved over
and over again in the mental laboratories--hasten and direct the
action of the nervous energy, so that a man under hypnotic
suggestion will improve more rapidly than a man who is not. But
no amount of suggestion can possibly effect a cure
instantaneously. Tuberculosis is another such thing; certain
diseases of the heart---"
"I see. Go on."
"Well, then, science has fixed certain periods in all these
various matters which simply cannot be lessened beyond a certain
point. And miracle does not begin--authorized miracle, I
mean--unless these periods are markedly shortened. Mere mental
cures, therefore, do not come under the range of authorized
miracle at all--though, of course, in many cases where there has
been little or no suggestion, or where the temperament is not
receptive, practically speaking, the miraculous element is most
probably present. In the second class--organic nervous
diseases--no miracle is proclaimed unless the cure is
instantaneous, or very nearly so. In the third class, again, no
miracle is proclaimed unless the cure is either instantaneous, or
the period of it very considerably shortened beyond all known
examples of natural cure by suggestion."
"And you mean to say that such cures are frequent?"
The old priest smiled.
"Why, of course. There is an accumulation of evidence from the
past hundred years which----"
"Broken limbs?"
"Oh yes; there's the case of Pierre de Rudder, at Oostacker, in
the nineteenth century. That's the first of the series--the
first, I mean, that has been scientifically examined. It's in all
the old books."
"What was the matter with him?"
"Leg broken below the knee for eight years."
"And how long did the cure take?"
"Instantaneous."
There was silence again.
Monsignor was staring out and downwards at the flitting
meadow-land far below. A flock of white birds moved across the
darkening grey, like flying specks seen in the eye, yet it seemed
with extraordinary slowness and deliberation, so great was the
distance at which they flew. He sighed.
"You can examine the records," said the priest presently; "and,
better than that, you can examine some of the cases for yourself,
and the certificates. They follow still the old system which Dr.
Boissarie began nearly a century ago."
"What about Zola?" demanded Monsignor abruptly.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Zola, the great French writer. I thought he had . . . had
advanced some very sharp criticisms of Lourdes."
"Er--when did he live?"
"Why, not long ago; nineteenth century, at the end."
Father Jervis shook his head, smiling.
"I've never heard of him," he said, "and I thought I knew Lourdes
literature pretty well. I'll enquire."
"Look," said the prelate suddenly; "what's that place
we're coming to?"
He nodded forward with his head to where vast white lines and
patches began to be visible on the lower slopes and at the foot of
long spurs that had suddenly come into sight against the sunset.
"Why, that's Lourdes."
(II)
As the two priests came out next morning from the west doors of the
tall church where they had said their masses, Monsignor stopped.
"Let me try to take it in a moment," he said.
* * * * *
They were standing on the highest platform of the pile of three
churches that had been raised over a hundred years ago, now in the
very centre of the enormous city that had grown little by little
around the sacred place. Beneath them, straight in front,
approached from where they stood by two vast sweeps of balustraded
steps, lay the _Place_, perhaps sixty feet beneath, of the shape of
an elongated oval, bounded on this side and that by the old
buildings where the doctors used to have their examination rooms,
now used for a hundred minor purposes connected with the churches
and the grotto. At the farther end of the Place, behind the old
bronze statue of Mary, rose up the comparatively new _Bureau de
Constatations_--a great hall (as the two had seen last night),
communicating with countless consulting- and examination-rooms,
where the army of State-paid doctors carried on their work. The
whole of the open Place between these buildings crawled with
humanity--not yet packed as it would be by evening--yet already
sufficiently filled by the two ever-flowing streams--the one
passing downwards to where the grotto lay out of sight on the
left, the other passing up towards the lower entrance of the great
hall. It resembled an amphitheatre, and the more so, since the
roofs of the buildings on every side, as well as the slope up
which the steps rose to the churches, adapted now as they were to
accommodate at least three hundred thousand spectators, were
already beginning to show groups and strings of onlookers who came
up here to survey the city.
On the right, beyond the Place, lay the old town, sloping up now,
up even to the medieval castle, which fifty years ago had stood
in lonely detachment, but now was faced on hill-top after
hill-top, at its own level, by the enormous nursing homes and
hostels, which under the direction of the Religious Orders had
gradually grown up about this shrine of healing, until now, up to
a height of at least five hundred feet, the city of Mary stood on
bastion after bastion of the lower slopes of the hills, like some
huge auditorium of white stone, facing down towards the river and
the Holy Place.
Finally, on the left, immediately to the left of the two
priests who stood silently looking, fifty feet below, ran the
sweep of the Gave, crossed by innumerable bridges which gave
access to the crowding town beyond the water, where once had
been nothing but meadowland and the beginning of the great
southern plain of France.
There was an air of extraordinary peace and purity about this
place, thought Monsignor. Whiteness was the predominating
colour--whiteness beneath, and whiteness running up high on the
right on to the hills--and above the amazing blue of the southern
sky. It was high and glorious summer about them, with a breeze as
intoxicating as wine and as fresh as water. From across the Place
they could hear the quick flapping of the huge Mary banner that
flew above the hall, for there were no wheels or motors here to
crush out the acuteness of the ear. The transference of the sick
from the hostels above the town was carried out by
aeroplanes--great winged decks, with awnings above and at the
sides, that slid down as if on invisible lines, to the entrance
of the other side of the hall, whence after a daily examination
by the doctors they were taken on by hand-litters to the grotto
or the bathing-pools.
* * * * *
Monsignor heard a step behind him as he stood and looked, still
pathetically bewildered by all that he saw, and still struggling,
in spite of himself, with a new upbreak of scepticism; and
turning, saw Father Jervis in the act of greeting a young monk in
the Benedictine habit.
"I knew we should meet. I heard you were here," the old man was
exclaiming. "You remember Monsignor Masterman?"
They shook hands, and Monsignor was not disappointed in
his friend's tact.
"Father Adrian absolutely haunts Lourdes nowadays," went on
Father Jervis. "I wonder his superiors allow him. And how's the
book getting on?"
The monk smiled. He was an exceedingly pleasant person to look
upon, with a thin, refined face and large, startlingly blue eyes.
He shook his head as he smiled.
"I'm getting frightened," he said. "I cannot see with the theologians
in all points. Well, the least said, the soonest mended."
Father Jervis' face had fallen a little. There was distinct
anxiety in his eyes.
"When will the book be out?" he asked quickly.
"I'm revising for the last time," said the other shortly. "And
you, Monsignor? . . . I had heard of your illness."
"Oh, Monsignor's nearly himself again. And will you take us into
the Bureau?" asked the old priest.
The young monk nodded.
"I shall be there all day," he said. "Ask for me at any time."
"Monsignor wants to see for himself. He wants to see a case
straight through. Is there anything----"
"Why, there's the very thing," interrupted the monk. (He fumbled
in his pocket a moment.) "Yes, here's the leaflet that was issued
last night." (He held out a printed piece of paper to Monsignor.)
"Read that through."
The prelate took it.
"What's the case?" he asked.
"The leaflet will give you the details. It's decay of the optic
nerve--a Russian from St. Petersburg. Both eyes completely blind,
the nerves destroyed, and he saw light yesterday for the first
time. He'll be down from the Russian hospice about eleven. We
expect a cure to-day or to-morrow."
"Well," said Father Jervis, "we mustn't detain you. Then, if we
look in about eleven?"
The monk nodded and smiled as he moved off.
"Certainly," he said. "At eleven then."
Monsignor turned to his friend.
"Well?"
Father Jervis shook his head.
"It's a sad business," he said. "That's Dom Adrian Bennett. He's
very daring. He's had one warning from Rome; but he's so
extraordinarily clever that it's very hard to silence him. He's
not exactly heretical; but he will work along lines that have
already been decided."
"Dear me! He seems very charming."
"Certainly. He is most charming, and utterly sincere. He's got the
entree everywhere here. He is a first-rate scientist, by the way.
But, Monsignor, I'd sooner not talk about him. Do you mind?"
"But what's his subject? Tell me that."
"It's the miraculous element in religion," said the priest
shortly. "Come, we must go to our coffee."
(III)
The hall was already crowded in every part as the two priests
looked in at the lower end a few minutes before eleven o'clock.
It was arranged more or less like a theatre, with a broad gangway
running straight up from the doors at one end to the foot of the
stage at the other. The stage itself, with a statue of Mary
towering at the back, communicated with the examination-rooms
behind the two doors, one on either side of the image.
"What's going on?" whispered Monsignor, as he glanced up first on
this side and that, at the array of heads that listened, and then
at the two figures that occupied the stage.
"It's a doctor lecturing on a cure. This goes on nearly all day.
We must get round to the back somehow."
As they passed in at last from the outside through the private
door through which the doctors and privileged persons had access
behind the stage, they heard a storm of clapping and voices from
the direction of the public hall on their right.
"That's finished then. Follow me, Monsignor."
They went through a passage or two, after their guide--a young
man in uniform--seeing as they went, through half-open doors here
and there, quite white rooms, glimpses of men in white, and once
at least a litter being set down; and came at last into what
looked like some kind of committee-room, lighted by tall windows
on the left, with a wide horseshoe table behind which sat perhaps
a dozen men, each wearing on his left breast the red and white
cross which marked them as experts. Opposite the examiners, but
half hidden from the two priests by the back of his tall chair,
sat the figure of a man.
Their guide went up to the end of the table, and almost
immediately they saw Father Adrian stand up and beckon to them.
"I've kept you two chairs," he whispered when they came up. "And
you'd better wear these crosses. They'll admit you anywhere." (He
pointed to the two red and white badges that hung over the backs
of their chairs.)
"Are we in time?"
"You're a little late," whispered the monk. Then he turned again
towards the patient, a typical fair-haired, bearded Russian with
closed eyes, who at that moment was answering some question put
to him by the presiding doctor in the centre.
The monk turned again.
"Can you understand Russian?"
Monsignor shook his head.
"Well, I'll tell you afterwards," said the other.
* * * * *
It seemed very strange to be sitting here, in this quiet room,
after the rush and push of the enormous crowds through which they
had made their way this morning. The air of the room was
exceedingly business-like, and not in the least even suggestive
of religion, except in the matter of a single statue of Our Lady
of Lourdes on a bracket on the wall above the President's head.
And these dozen men who sat here seemed quietly business-like
too. They sat here, men of various ages and nationalities, all in
the thin white doctor's dress, with papers spread before them,
and a few strange instruments scattered here and there, leaning
forward or leaning back, but all intently listening to and
watching the Russian, who, still with closed eyes, answered the
short questions put to him continuously by the President. There
seemed no religious excitement even in the air; the atmosphere
was one, rather, of simple science.
There seemed something faintly familiar in all this to the man
who had lost his memory. . . . Certainly he had known of Lourdes
as soon as it was mentioned to him, and he seemed now to
remember that some such claim to be perfectly scientific had
always been made by the authorities of the place. But he had
supposed, somehow, that the claim was a false one. . . .
The Russian suddenly rose.
"Well!" whispered Monsignor sharply as the doctors began to talk.
The monk smiled.
"He's just said an interesting thing. The President asked him
just now whether he had seen anything of the crowds as he came
down this morning."
"Yes?"
"He said that people looked like trees moving about. . . . Oh no!
he didn't know he was making a quotation. Look! he's going down
to the grotto. He'll be back in half an hour to report."
Monsignor leaned back in his chair.
"And you tell me that the optic nerves were destroyed?"
The monk looked at him in wide-eyed wonder.
"Certainly. He was examined on Tuesday, when he came.
To-day's Friday."
"And you believe he'll be cured?"
"I shall be very much surprised if he's not."
There was a stir by the door as the Russian disappeared. A young,
bright-eyed doctor looked in and nodded, and the next instant a
brancardier appeared, followed by a litter.
"But how have you time to examine all these thousands of cases?"
asked the prelate, watching the litter advance.
"Oh, not one in a hundred comes through to us here. Besides,
this is only one of a dozen committee-rooms. It's only the most
sensational cases--where there's real organic injury of a
really serious kind--that ever come at all before the highest
courts. Cases, I mean, where, if there's a cure, the
publication of the miracle follows as a matter of course. . . .
What's this case, I wonder?" he ended sharply, glancing down at
the printed paper before him, and then up again at the litter
that was being arranged.
Monsignor looked too at the paper that lay before him. Some
thirty paragraphs, carefully numbered, dated, and signed, gave,
as it seemed, a list of the cases to be examined.
"Number fourteen," murmured the monk.
Number fourteen, it appeared, was a case of fractured spine--a
young girl, aged sixteen; a German. The accident had happened
four months before. The notes, signed by half a dozen names,
described the complete paralysis below the waist, with a few
other medical details.
Monsignor looked again at the girl on the other side of the
table, guarded by the brancardiers and a couple of doctors, while
the monk talked to him rapidly in Latin. He saw her closed eyes
and colourless lips.
"This case has attracted a good deal of attention," whispered
the monk. "The Emperor's said to be interested in it, through
one of the ladies of the Court, whose servant the girl was. It's
interesting for two or three reasons. First, the fracture is
complete, and it's marvellous she hasn't died. Then it's been
taken up as a kind of test case by a group of materialists in
Berlin. They've taken it up, because the girl has declared again
and again that she is perfectly certain she will be cured at
Lourdes. She claims to have had a vision of Our Lady, who told
her so. Her father's a freethinker, by the way, and has only
finally allowed her to come so that he can use her as an
argument afterwards."
"Who has examined her?" asked Monsignor sharply.
"She was examined last night on her arrival, and again this
morning. Dr. Meurot, the President here" (he indicated with his
head the doctor who sat three places off, who was putting his
questions rapidly to the two attending physicians)--"Dr. Meurot
examined her himself early this morning. This is just the formal
process before she goes to the grotto. The fracture is complete.
It's between the eleventh and twelfth dorsal vertebrae."
"And you think she'll be cured?" The monk smiled.
"Who can tell?" he said. "We've only had one case before, and the
papers on that are not quite in order, though it's commonly
believed to be genuine."
"But it's possible?"
"Oh, certainly. And her own conviction is absolute. It'll
be interesting."
"You seem to take it pretty easily," murmured the prelate.
"Oh, the facts are established a hundred times over--the facts, I
mean, that cures take place here which are not even approached in
mental laboratories. But---"
He was interrupted by a sudden movement of the brancardiers.
"See, they're removing her," he said. "Now, what'll you do,
Monsignor? Will you go down to the grotto, or would you sooner
watch a few more cases?"
"I think I'd sooner stay here," said the other, "at least for
an hour or two."
(IV)
It was the hour of the evening procession and of the
Benediction of the Sick.
All day long the man who had lost his memory had gone to and fro
with his companions, each wearing the little badge that gave them
entrance everywhere; they had lunched with Dr. Meurot himself.
If Monsignor Masterman had been impressed by the social power of
Catholicism at Versailles, and by its religious reality in Rome,
he was ten thousand times more impressed by its scientific
courage here in Lourdes. For here religion seemed to have
stepped down into an arena hitherto (as he fancied) restricted
to the play of physical forces. She had laid aside her oracular
claims, her comparatively unsupported assertions of her own
divinity; had flung off her robes of state and authority and was
competing here on equal terms with the masters of natural
law--more, she was accepted by them as their mistress. For there
seemed nothing from which she shrank. She accepted all who came
to her desiring her help; she made no arbitrary distinctions to
cover her own incapacities. Her one practical desire was to heal
the sick; her one theoretical interest to fix more and more
precisely, little by little, the exact line at which nature
ended and supernature began. And, if human evidence went for
anything--if the volumes of radiophotography and sworn testimony
went for anything, she had established a thousand times over
during the preceding, half-century that under her aegis, and
hers alone, healing and reconstituting forces were at work to
which no merely natural mental science could furnish any
parallels. All the old quarrels of a century ago seemed at an
end. There was no longer any dispute as to the larger facts. All
that now remained to be done by this huge organization of
international experts was to define more and more closely and
precisely where the line lay between the two worlds. All cures
that could be even remotely paralleled in the mental
laboratories were dismissed as not evidently supernatural; all
those which could not be so paralleled were recorded, with the
most minute detail, under the sworn testimonies of doctors who
had examined the patients immediately before and immediately
after the cure itself. In a series of libraries that abutted on
to the Place, Monsignor Masterman, under the guidance of Dom
Adrian Bennett, had spent a couple of hours this afternoon in
examining the most striking of the records and photographs
preserved there. He was amazed to find that even by the end of
the nineteenth century cures had taken place for which the most
modern scientists could find no natural explanation.
Ten minutes ago he had taken his place in the procession of the
Blessed Sacrament, with the monk's last word still in his head.
"It is during the procession itself," he had said, "that the work
is done. We lay aside all deliberate knowledge as the Angelus
rings, and give ourselves up to faith."
* * * * *
And now the procession had started, and already, it seemed to
him, he had begun to understand. It was as he himself emerged, a
few paces in front of the Blessed Sacrament Itself, walking with
the prelates, that that understanding reached its climax. He
paused at the head of the steps, to wait for the canopy to come
through, and his heart rose within him so mightily that it was
all he could do not to cry out.
Beneath him, seen now from the opposite end from which he had
looked this morning, lay the Place, under a wholly different
appearance. The centre of the great oval was cleared, with the
exception of a huge pulpit, surmounted by a circular
sounding-board, that stood in the middle. But round this empty
space rose, in tier after tier, masses of humanity beyond all
reckoning, up and up, as on the sides of an enormous
amphitheatre, as far as the highest roofs of the highest
buildings that looked on to the space. Before him rose the pile
of churches, and here too, on every platform roof and stair,
swarmed the spectators. The doors of the three churches were
flung wide, and far within, in the lighted interiors, lay the
heads of countless crowds, as cobble-stones, seen in perspective.
The whole Place was in shadow now, as the sun had just gone down,
but the sky was still alight overhead, a vast tender-coloured
vault, as sweet as a benediction. Here and there, in the
illimitable blue, like crumbs of diamond dust, gleamed the first
stars of evening.
And from this vast multitude, swayed by a white figure within the
pulpit, articulate now as the listener emerged, rose up a song to
Mary, as from one soft and gigantic voice, appealing to Her
Presence who for over a century and a half, it seemed, had chosen
to dwell here by virtue and influence, the Great Mother of the
redeemed and the Consoler of the afflicted, whose Divine Son was
even now on His way, as at Cana itself, to turn the water of
sorrow into the wine of joy. . . . Then, as the canopy came out,
at an imperious gesture from the tiny swaying figure in the
pulpit, the music ceased; great trumpets sounded a phrase; there
was a rustle and a movement as of a breaking wave as the crowds
knelt; and the _Pange Lingua_ rose up in solemn adoration. . . .
As he came down the steps, his eyes quick with tears, he saw for
the first time the lines of the sick in the place to which he had
been told to look. There they lay, some four thousand in number,
placed side by side in two great circling rows round the whole
arena, a fringe of pain to the exultant crowds, in litters laid
so close together that they seemed but two great continuous beds,
and between them the high flower-strewn platform along which
Jesus of Nazareth should pass by. There they lay, all of them
bathed to-day in the strange water that had sprung up a hundred
and fifty years ago under the fingers of a peasant child, waiting
for the sacramental advent of Him who had made both that water
and those for whose healing it was designed.
And yet not all were cured--not perhaps one in ten of all who
came in confidence. That surely was wonderful. . . . Was it then
that that same Sovereign Power who had permitted the pain elected
to retain His own sovereignty, and to show that the Lawgiver was
fettered by no law? One thing at least was certain, if those
records which the priest had examined this morning were to be
believed, that no receptiveness of temperament, no subjective
expectancy of cure, guaranteed that the cure would take place.
Natures that had responded marvellously in the mental
laboratories seemed ineffective here; natures that were inert and
immovable under the influence of sympathetic science leapt up
here to meet the call of some Voice whose very existence a
hundred years ago had been in doubt.
The front of the long procession, Monsignor saw, had reached now
the doors of the basilica, and would presently, after making the
complete round, pour down into the arena to allow the Blessed
Sacrament to move more quickly. It was an exquisite sight, even
from here, as the prelate set foot on the platform and began to
move to the left. The long lines of tapers, four deep, went like
some great serpent, rippling with light, above the heads of the
sick; and here and there in the slopes of the crowded spectators
shone out other lights, steady as stars in the motionless half-lit
evening air. Then, as he went, slowly, pace by pace, he remembered
the sick and glanced down, as the music on a sudden ceased.
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