“And the great silver box, Mary Christmas? What about that?”
Then Mary Christmas told them that when Saint Gregory died they cut off his right hand, which had wrought such wonders, and placed it in a silver box in the great church. The hand still wrought wonders, for when sick and suffering people and those who were troubled with care and sin came to Etchmiadzin and knelt and touched the box, they were healed. Then, she said, there was a certain good bishop who was much worried in his mind over an old sin in his boyhood—a sin which most persons would have forgotten. But he could not forget it. All his life he had wanted to atone for it in some more satisfactory way than just by holy living. When he saw the miracles wrought by the hand of the saint, he thought of the most satisfactory way in all the world.
One night, when all was still within the high walls of the cathedral square in Etchmiadzin, he laid aside his bishop’s robes and put on the gray gown and hood of a pilgrim. He went to the dark church with its dim altar lights, and took the silver box, which he wrapped in purple velvet and bound with cords of gold. Kneeling by the altar in the stillness, he consecrated himself to purity of thought and act and, with the aid of holy Saint Gregory, to the service of God among those who most needed Him.
He did not know just where he was going, Mary Christmas told them; but once he was outside the wall, some Power led him where It would. It took him far beyond cities and towns to high, wind-swept plains, where rough men wandered with their flocks and herds, and to secluded mountain villages whose people knew nothing of Etchmiadzin and its great church, and had never heard of the good saint. Among these people and in these villages the pilgrim lingered, and wherever he saw sorrow or sickness, he would take the silver box with its rich covering of purple and gold from beneath his shabby cloak and show it to those who needed help. Here the power of the saint was greater even than at Etchmiadzin, for those in suffering or anxiety needed but to look upon the box, and they were straightway healed.
Most wonderful of all, the saint gave his miraculous help not only to people but to animals and flowers. For once when the tired pilgrim rested on the top of a high, silent hill and sang a psalm to God, he chanced to see a lamb that had fallen and was caught between two rocks. Carefully placing the silver box on the hillside, he hurried to help the poor creature. But as he drew near, he saw to his amazement the rocks that held the lamb separate, and the animal spring to its feet and frisk away.
“And an old man told me once,” concluded Mary Christmas, looking at the rapt faces of the children, “what he heard about the hand of holy Saint Gregory. He said that flowers and trees which wanted water in the hot summer would spring up afresh when the silver box was brought among them. So that wherever the pilgrim went, the valleys and hills blossomed and there was peace everywhere—just as on Ascension eve.”
“What’s Ascension eve, Mary Christmas?”
Mary Christmas looked at them in perplexed surprise, and then at the church spire, just visible through the blossoming trees. Evidently she was doubtful as to the sufficiency of New England Congregationalism in the nineties.
“It is the eve of the day when our Lord ascended into Heaven,” she said slowly. “On that night, in my country, at one moment which no one knows, all the water everywhere is still. Rivers and streams do not move. In that moment stones and flowers and stars and all creatures speak to one another. If you should hide in a cave in the mountain and hear them, you would never feel sadness any more.”
The tense softness of her voice as she said those last words mingled with the hum of bees in the quiet orchard. The children were silent as they looked at her, even the boys vaguely conscious that this was no time to speak. She leaned back against the gray trunk of the apple tree, her body relaxed, her quick hands listless in her lap, her mouth still and thoughtful. Only her eyes under their dark brows were not still. They were as though haunted by living flames that soared upward from the fire in her heart. Mary Wescott saw them burning there, and understood all at once that Beauty had kindled them—the irresistible, torturing loveliness that lies in ancient, lip-worn tales, consecrated forever by their own mystic grace and by the simple faith of a people’s childhood.