CHAPTER XXIV REX BASIRE’S HUMOUR
A rough-paved village square; green-shuttered houses, sweltering in the afternoon sun; a pair of openwork spires, delicate as lace, dazzlingly white as Caen stone could make them, silhouetted against the burning sky; tattered children with mercenary hands full of wild flowers; a knot of British pilgrims, irreverently loquacious outside the church’s western door; gruesome beggars making exhibition of wounds; honest peasant people; dishonest relic sellers—such were the salient features of La Delivrande at the moment when Marjorie and Dinah descended into its closer air out of the field-smelling, wind-blown road that brought them hither from the coast.
‘We will ask Mrs. Arbuthnot’s opinion, and abide by it,’ cried Lord Rex, coming forward a few paces to meet them. ‘She will be far better versed in this kind of thing than the rest of us. Ought we to carry candles in our hands, Mrs. Arbuthnot, when we seek our cure? There is a candle-stall conveniently opposite, and Miss Verschoyle and I will head the procession as penitents-in-chief.’
‘Please help to keep Lord Rex in order, Mrs. Arbuthnot. He is really doing and saying the absurdest things!’ Rosie Verschoyle must have been, surely, at the zenith of good temper when she thus addressed that poor Mrs. Arbuthnot! ‘Now, Lord Rex, I command you to drop this talk about candles instantly. Of course the whole business is a ridiculous piece of Popish superstition, still,’ observed Rosie, with a certain largeness, ‘one has one’s ideas. A church is a church. Positively, I will not speak another word to you to-day unless you behave yourself with decorum when we are inside.’
The awfulness of the threat appeared, for the moment, to check Lord Rex Basire’s playful spirits. He made no purchase of candles. Save that he affected a sudden and very marked lameness of gait, he behaved no worse than his companions on entering the church. Guided by ragged Jean Jacques, the English people walked up to a fretted stone screen dividing the choir from the nave. In a small side altar on the left was a doll, clothed in woven gold, unlovely of face, with eyes ‘dreadfully staring,’ with a crown of paper lilies, with a score of rushlights burning before her in a row—La Delivrande.
Who that has travelled in primitive French districts can fail of knowing these little miracle chapels, their atmosphere, their votive offerings, their sincerity, their tinsel, their pathos? At least a hundred graven memorials on the wall beside the Virgin told the story of simple human hearts that had suffered, believed, of anguished human hopes that had here found fulfilment. Dinah Arbuthnot’s cheeks paled as Marjorie, in a whisper, translated the meaning of the inscriptions. Here a mother recorded her gratitude for her child, a wife for her husband, a daughter for her parent. Here the names were graven in full, here in initials. Occasionally there was one word only, ‘Reconnaissance,’ and a date. Dinah’s cheeks paled, her eyes filled. If she were alone, Dinah felt—puritan, heretic, though she were—she would gladly kneel and make her confession, lay bare her sorrow, on the spot where so many stricken and weary human souls had cast away the sad garment of repression before her!
Lord Rex Basire’s view of the place and situation continued irresistibly comic. And the faces of his companions, the rose-pink face of Miss Verschoyle not excepted, failed to condemn him for his levity.
A heap of pious gifts, testimonials, in kind, from the cured, lay, incongruously, as they had been offered, before the altar of the Virgin. There were crutches, big and small, a child’s reclining carriage, models of ships innumerable, a wooden leg—the stoutest faith might long for an explanation of that wooden leg! Well, reader, with the fair church solemn and hushed, five or six black-clad women telling their beads before the different altars, its only Catholic inmates, Lord Rex, it must be concluded, found the temptation towards practical jocularity too strong for him. Hobbling up to the altar, this humorous little lord stood, with bowed head, with contrite manner, in front of the lily-crowned figure for some minutes’ space. Slowly ascending a step, he next deposited his crutch, a silver and ebony toy, upon the heap of worn and dusty peasant offerings; then walked away with tripping, resonant step, with head joyfully erect, down the western aisle, as who should say, ‘Behold me—a believer, cured.’