[XVII]
To Miss Sarah Harding, The Orphanage, Little Blessington, Dorset.
Hotel Moderne, Lourdes,
June 7, 1910.
My dear Sally,
I have just encountered one of those strange half-accidents that crop up like rocks in the quiet stream of one's everyday life just where a rock is the least likely to be. You turn the bend from Tuesday into Wednesday, and hey presto, before you know what's happened, your little canoe has been shot out of the main current into some unsuspected channel, whence it emerges presently as from a waking dream.
Last week as I went into the club between an afternoon at the hospital and two evening visits in Kensington, I met Bettany, of whom you may perhaps have heard me speak. A quite successful Government official, he contrives also to edit one of the leading Roman Catholic newspapers and incidentally to organise with conspicuous ability periodical pilgrimages to various Continental shrines. He is a man who has always interested me, partly because he has seemed to me to possess in a very marked degree one of the strongest and most challenging characteristics of his Church—the habit, even in matters of religion, of completely dissociating the man from his function. A ladder for the faith of other people need not necessarily have any faith of its own—and be an extremely serviceable ladder for all that. In his particular case, a belief in the miraculous powers of those relics and waters to which he enables the faithful so comfortably to travel, is not, I think, de fide—demanded by his Church. In any case he does not possess it, but regards the whole phenomenon through his gold-rimmed spectacles with an entirely amiable, and of course very discreet, scepticism. At the same time his talent for organisation and his unique knowledge of Continental hotels and railways are entirely at the disposal of his more credulous brethren. And his name must be known in this connection to many thousands of Catholics on both sides of the Channel.
On this particular evening he told me that he was extremely busy making the final arrangements for what promised to be the largest English pilgrimage that has yet travelled to Lourdes. And then, remembering suddenly, I suppose, that I was a doctor of medicine, he sat bolt upright and said, "By George, you're the very man that can help me." For it seemed that there were so many invalids going out with the party—at least forty, he told me—some of whom were in a very bad way, that it had appeared desirable to take a medical man in case of emergencies upon the long journey. And did I know of anyone who would care to go? He had already made some inquiries, he said, among Catholic medical friends, but hadn't as yet found anyone who had been able to undertake the duties. He was not in a position to offer anything more than travelling expenses; and he was beginning, as a consequence, to feel rather doubtful about finding a man in time. It was not essential, he considered, that the accompanying physician should be himself a Catholic, provided that he was reasonably sympathetic; and then, reading my thoughts, I suppose, he asked me if I should be sufficiently interested to make the little trip myself.
Well at first, of course, this seemed quite out of the question; but on looking through my engagements I began to think that with a certain amount of arrangement it might become possible after all. We were to leave Charing Cross at ten o'clock on Friday morning, and would be home by the following Thursday night. And it was to be quite understood that I was coming not as an official, but only as a visitor who would be willing, if necessary, to render aid en route—all of which goes to account for the address upon my notepaper, and the fact that I seem at this moment to be very much more than eight hundred miles from Harley Street.
Joining the train at Charing Cross, it was quite obvious to me that a very considerable proportion of the party was Irish—the sing-song western accent was everywhere—and that a comparatively large number of priests would be travelling with us. Most of these I have since discovered to be genial, even hilarious, souls, drawn, as it appears, from every stratum of society, and differing, as a consequence, very greatly both in real education and superficial polish.
It was not until we got on board at Folkestone that I had a first opportunity of becoming acquainted with the sick people of the assembly; and by this time I was already conscious of being surrounded by some curious, indefinable atmosphere, that was walling us away from what to me, with my half-Protestant, half-scientific upbringing, represented the everyday world. I doubt if many of my fellow-pilgrims felt this. But I am certain that the other passengers on the boat did. And it was both odd and a trifle amusing to observe the blank expressions upon numerous well-fed and monocled countenances on their way to a normal Paris. Yet from my own point of view I had to admit that there was a good deal of excuse for them. For we might all, as it seemed to me, very easily have stepped out of the Middle Ages.