from the ends of the earth they come—old and young, the lame and the blind—to ask for the blessing.
afternoon. there was not a vacant place left in the long line of waiting sick, so that at the last, when a little, white-faced blind boy with dreadful horny growths on his eyes, was handed over the heads of the crowd, he seemed to have come too late.
his mother’s voice rose anxiously, in reiterated piteous demands to the stretcher-carriers to make a place for him, any place, where he could receive the blessing, for it was the day of the greatest pilgrimage of the year, when twenty-five thousand people sang and prayed together for the cure of the sick, when the host was carried in solemn procession to bless them, lying in long lines up and down the broad esplanade.
[90]“oh, for the love of god, find a place for him!” she implored, in so strained a voice of entreaty that the crowd, dense as it was, gave way a little and allowed her to press forward, back of the wheeled chairs of the cripples. the stretcher-carrier who had taken the child in his arms hesitated, looking about him for a vacant spot. he glanced at a wounded soldier, rigid on his litter, his face as white as it would be in his coffin; and then turned to a child stricken with a disease of the bones which paralyzed his legs and made of his hands only twisted, shapeless stumps, but which still permitted him to sit in one of the wheeled chairs. his little withered body did not half fill it, and it was there beside him that the attendant decided to put down the blind boy.
his mother gave a long sigh of intense feeling and between the closely packed bodies of the crowd strained forward to be near him.
“i’m here, darling, i’m here,” she said in a voice of concentrated tenderness.
the blind boy turned his hanging head a little, toward the sound of her voice and stretched[91] back a thin, waxy-white hand. she managed to touch it for an instant, but then said, “not now, darling. you mustn’t turn back toward mother. you must join your hands and pray to be cured, pray for the blessing. you must repeat whatever the priest says.”
for at that moment the powerfully built, bearded priest, with the eyes of fire and the thrown-back head of born command, strode down the center of the great open place and stood looking intently about him at the lines of the white-faced sick, and the immense throngs of pilgrims back of them. he raised his hands suddenly in a vivid gesture, and cried in a trumpet-like voice, like a captain leading forward a charge, “brothers, pray! pray for our sick. with all your soul, with all the strength of your body and mind, pray god for our sick!”
he paused a moment. every eye was on him.
the blind boy held his face lowered meekly as blind children often do, as sensitive children who know themselves unsightly always do. his thin, white neck was bent like that of a victim[92] awaiting the blow, but he put his little pale fingers together and, turning for a moment, tried to show to his mother that they were in the attitude of prayer. she whispered, “yes, yes, darling, that is right. but not toward me. toward where the blessing is coming, so that you may be cured.”
“lord save us! lord god save us, for we perish!” prayed the priest in a loud clear voice of exaltation; and after him all the multitude cried it aloud, in a great murmur like the voice of a forest, or of the sea.
the blind boy’s lips moved with the rest, but his little face was clouded and anxious. he whispered to the crippled child beside him:
“are you blind, too, or can you see?”
“i can see,” said the other, “but i have never walked.”
“then you must show me where i must put my hands so that they will be toward the blessing,” begged the blind child.
the other took the thin, transparent fingers between his twisted stumps, and directed them toward the priest, thrillingly upright, aspiring[93] visibly toward the sky. “there, you must keep them turned toward the priest now,” he said with an accent of certainty. “later on it will be toward the procession as it moves along, and then at the last toward the church.”
“you must tell me when to change them,” said the blind boy.
he stretched out his joined hands farther in the direction indicated by his companion and repeated with the others, after the priest, his little voice lost in the great upward rush of the supplications of the thousands around him, “lord! lord! our sole trust is in thee!”
the priest’s voice soared into a glorious note of song, in which the multitude joined, their eyes on him, their faces solemn in expectation. the priest sang a line, the multitude chanted a response; the man’s voice ran out again, yearning, beseeching, the voice of the multitude rose thousand-fold in answer. the earth seemed to shake in unison, the low-hanging, heavy gray clouds to send back the sound. the chanting, imploring, impassioned voice of the throng[94] seemed more alive than its multitudinous bodies, rapt into utter stillness.
“is it thus that i should hold my hands?” whispered the blind boy after a time.
“no, now the procession has just come into the other end of the square,” said the crippled child. with an effort he leaned, took the little white fingers again, and pointed them another way.
“so?” asked the blind child humbly.
“yes, so,” answered the other. he tried to put his own shapeless stumps together in the attitude of prayer and began to sing with the pilgrims now defiling before them in endless lines, “praise! all praise to thee! praise, all praise to thee, lord god!” the pilgrims were passing by, now, in single file, each with his long white taper, burning yellow in the gray light of the gray day. their voices were loud and personal, each one as he passed being heard for an instant alone. “glory! glory to thee!” they all sang the propitiatory words together, over and over, a hundred times repeated—the old wrinkled peasants in their blouses; the elegant[95] officers in their well-cut uniforms; the stout elderly merchants; the thin, weedy boys; the white-faced, shaven priests; the black men from senegal with bushy, woolly hair; the tall, fair-haired man from england; the occasional soldier on leave in his shapeless, faded, blue-gray uniform. above all their voices rose the silver bugle-like call of the priest, burning, devouring in its ardor, “brothers! brothers! with all your souls, now. glory be to thee! oh, lord, save us, for we perish! lord, our trust is in thee. praised be thy name!”
with each clamorous exhortation, repeated clamorously by all those imploring voices, he lifted the multitude up another step toward the great moment of awe and faith. the tears were streaming down the faces of many of the women in the crowd. the little boy’s mother sobbed loudly, and prayed with all her might.
the march past of the innumerable men, the incessant flickering passage of their pale-yellow lights, the never-ending procession of their pale, anxious faces, became an obsession. it seemed that every one, everywhere in the world, was[96] marching together, singing and praying, hoping against hope for a miracle.
“isn’t it time to change my hands?” asked the little blind boy desperately. “i have heard so many people pass. i am very, very tired.”
“no, it is not yet time to change,” said the other, leaning forward to look down the esplanade. “the procession with the host goes very slowly because it stops before each sick person. they are not near yet.”
“my hands are very tired,” murmured the little blind boy, faintly. but he held his hands out still, praying with the others, as the priest directed them. “lord help us, for we perish. lord! thou alone canst save us! lord, say but one word and we are healed. lord, say but one word. but one word, oh, lord!”
he held his strengthless hands out as he was told, groping helplessly for the blessing he so sorely needed; his blind eyes turned docilely in the direction indicated to him; he repeated meekly in his feeble little voice whatever words he was told to say—and all around him thousands[97] and thousands of other helpless, docile, suffering human beings in similar plight, did the same, desperately, their faces groping up toward the sky, their joined hands imploring, “lord save us, or we perish!”
the pilgrims filed past continually, their eyes staringly fixed on the feeble light of their tapers, their voices torn out of their bodies by the ever-deepening fervor and hope of the shouted, passionate commands of the priest, calling, “brothers! with all your soul pray for our sick! lord, say but one word and they are healed! but one word, oh, lord!”
“the blessing is very long in coming,” faltered the blind boy timidly, his face even whiter than at the beginning, his lips blue.
the pilgrims passed constantly, the heavy tramp of their feet shaking the chair on which sat the little paralyzed boy and the blind child, their hands outstretched. the men’s voices were hoarse and deep now, trembling with fatigue and emotion.
the perspiration streamed down the face of the priest as in piercing tones he exhorted the[98] multitudes, “brothers, with all your soul, pray! pray!”
presently, because he was a weak, sick little child, and because the blessing was so long in coming, the little blind boy fell asleep, his head on the shoulder of the paralyzed child.
then all the care and anxiety and humiliation and sorrow left his little white face. it was perfect in a perfect peace.
the blessing had come.
evening.
scattered all over the vast stretch of the esplanade, thousands of little lights flickered and moved about in the rainy darkness, all that could be seen of the immense multitude gathering for the evening procession. the top of the great, horseshoe-shaped, marble, inclined plane up which they were later to defile, was so high above the ground that not a sound reached there of all those human voices talking together in the dark, calling to each other, as people tried to find their friends in the obscurity, and to form groups that they might march together. the[99] little lights they held were only slightly sheltered from the gusts of wind-driven rain by cheap paper shades and they flickered and flared up, and many were extinguished. although many went out and were lighted again only once more to have the wind puff them into blackness, the number of lighted ones grew fabulously as the crowd assembled. the little yellow spots of life spread further and further, till around the foot of the huge inclined plane was an ocean of lights, heaving formlessly, with a futile, aimless motion like the sea, humanity lost in the darkness.
then a faint murmur came up through the rain and darkness. speaking voices are not heard far, but voices raised in song have wings. the crowd was beginning to sing.
it was also beginning to take shape. from the foot of the inclined plane out into the black esplanade, streamed two long files of light, purposeful, with the sharp, forward-piercing line of the arrow. the procession was beginning to form.
the murmur rose into a chant as the crowd, hearing the first notes, took it up, singing as they[100] fell into line. the first of the lights advanced up the ascent toward the top, which was blazing with light from the illuminated front of the lofty church. far, far behind, stretching twice around the immense esplanade and disappearing into the distant blackness of the endless avenue, the flickering lights were now in two lines, moving forward steadily.
the sound of voices grew louder, the advancing files were visible now, masses intensely black against the night.
the wind roared, the rain beat down. the voices suddenly rang out clear and vibrant, high above the confused roar of the singing multitudes below.
then the glimmering blur of the faces in the reflected light of the candles shone through the rain; each dim figure, in a momentary transfiguration, was resplendent in the flare of light from the church, the voices shouted loud and strong, drowning out in their instant’s glory of individual life the hoarse chant of the vast crowd below. then each figure passed forward out of the light and began to descend the inclined plane[101] on the other side, going singing down into the blackness.
there were so many singing now that, although they all sang the same chant over and over, a chant in which recurs constantly the acclaiming shout of “hail! hail!” they were not singing in tune together nor even in time, nor even often the same words at the same time.
as the groups passed, each one was singing in its own fashion on a different key from those gone before and those following them. when this was too apparent, they sometimes stopped, listened, caught the note from the pilgrims nearest to them, and burst out again, this time in harmony. but for the most part they listened only to their own voices and to those of their friends, and sang lustily in a hearty discordance.—and so vast was the throng and so simple the joyful air they chanted, that from that monstrous discordance rose a strange and wonderful harmony like no other music in the world, with a deep pulsation longer than that of any other music, beating time, beating true.
they passed, shouting out loudly the confident[102] words of their song; the young faces often laughing gaily in the shaking light of their candles, stopping to light the blown-out flames at the candles of their friends; the older people tramping forward resolutely, singing, often not noting that their one light had been blown out and that they were walking in darkness—no, not walking in darkness, because of the infinite number of lights about them, carried by their fellows; the young girls’ eyes glistening through the rain as they gazed upward toward the circle of white light at the top of the ascent; the old men’s eyes turned downward on the darkness to which they would descend; the occasional priest-leader beating time, marshaling the lines; the occasional children holding to their parents’ hands, their eyes blank and trustful, fixed on their candles, their pure lips incessantly shaping the joyful acclaiming shout of “hail! hail!”
sometimes a group lagged behind, either because of the carelessness of the young people in it, or the fatigue of the old people, and there was almost a break in the line of lights. but always as they approached the moment of transfiguration,[103] the ones who were behind hurried forward shufflingly to keep the line intact. the line was always intact.
the rain beat down on them, but they sang loudly and joyously, rejoicing in singing together; the wind tore at their garments and puffed at their frail, unprotected lights. many went out. but there were always enough lights left in each group to light those of the others—if they wished.
last of all i saw a strong young man whose light had been extinguished, holding out his lifeless candle to that of an old, poor, bent woman who, patiently, patiently, offered him her tiny, living flame.
