The Miracle

The night had been fine with a light wind and scurrying clouds. Towards
morning, to the accompaniment of a rising gale, rain began to fall and
fell with increasing violence till it turned into a regular downpour,
and wakened the light sleepers in the convent with its fierce,
pebble-like volleying against their window panes.

In the cemetery behind the convent there was nothing but the rain and
the darkness, or rather the double darkness that the four high walls
shut in; no sound but the rain thudding dully upon the grass and the
rows of wooden crosses. But yes—in one spot the downpour had a
sharper sound as it toppled from stone to stone, an irregular plash and
gurgle that could be heard even above the rain and wind.

When the first light struggled over the walls a silhouette rose dimly
against it; it was the silhouette of a marble trumpet that filled and
overflowed unceasingly onto the tiles beneath. Gradually the figure
under the trumpet outlined itself, the head thrown back, the right arm
lifted to support the instrument, the marble wings folded behind the
marble shoulders; a tall, soldierly figure above the rows of meek
black crosses. The statue of the angel stands upon a pedestal at the
foot of which is a little tomb that gradually fills with the
rain-water he spills from the mouth of his trumpet.

Shortly after dawn the nuns rose, and sighed as they looked out on the
lenten greyness of their fields. They dressed, shivering in the icy
morning air, and pattered noisily down to the chapel, their pecking
voices shrill along the white corridors, their slippers flip-flapping,
their beads and keys and crosses tinkling.

About two hours later a bell sounded, and the lay-sister opened the
little grille in the front door. Standing in the porch she saw two
curious figures; a man with a large bundle that looked like a bundle of
rags in his arms, and a young woman. They were drenched, and two big
pools had already formed at their feet. The man wore a long blue
overcoat, and a dirty old cap, the drowned brim of which sagged over
his eyes. The woman wore a black shawl drawn tight about the milky oval
of her face. As the door-keeper opened to them the man raised his cap
and spoke in a loud, threatening voice.

‘We came to see the saint’s grave, sister,’ he said.

‘Oh, but this isn’t the day,’ she replied hastily. ‘Didn’t you know?
Wednesday or Saturday, after three: those are the visiting hours.’

‘We couldn’t wait,’ he said. ‘And we’re travelling since four o’clock
this morning—under that,’ he added, lifting his forefinger to the
spilling sky.

‘I’m so sorry I can’t let you in,’ she said regretfully. ‘You
understand of course, if once we began—’

‘What is it? What is it?’ a jolly voice asked behind her, and Sister
Clare, the bursar, came out.

‘This man wants to visit the cemetery, sister. I’ve told him he must
come back on Wednesday or Saturday.’

‘That’s right,’ Clare added jovially, ‘after three, after three!’

‘’Twill be no use Wednesday or Saturday,’ the man replied flatly, ‘no
more than if you said the day of judgment.’

He half turned to go, then swung round on the two nuns and with one
movement of his arm flung open his bundle.

‘Look at him, will ye?’ he cried with reproach in his voice.

As he tossed off the accumulation of rags they saw a bright wakeful,
boy’s face with two great black eyes that fixed them mournfully. It
was as if those grave eyes had been turned in their direction all the
while under the wrappings.

‘Your son?’ asked Sister Clare.

‘My only son,’ he corrected her. ‘Only child. And he never walked since
he was born eight years ago.’

‘Poor little darling!’ murmured Clare sympathetically. She took the
child’s cold cheeks in her two hands and kissed him.

‘Last night,’ the man’s harsh voice cried over her head, ‘I heard it. I
heard it as plain as I hear you now. I said it to you, Birdie?’

‘You did,’ affirmed his wife without looking up.

‘You didn’t want to come?’

‘You said to leave me imaginations till the weather cleared.’

‘I did. I was in dread the child would catch cold.’

‘And I got up and dressed him myself, dressed him and wrapped him up,’
the man continued triumphantly, his eyes blazing with passion. ‘With me
own two hands I dressed him. Did I as much as make a cup of tea for
meself?’

‘You did not.’

‘I didn’t. And still you wouldn’t believe I’d set out on me own. There
you wor, sitting up in the bed, and I turned round and I was going out
the door, and said to you, “Woman, woman, will you come or stay?”’.’

‘He did, sister, he did. Them were his very words.’

‘Poor creatures!’ exclaimed Clare. ‘And you mean to say you’ve had
nothing to eat?’

‘No, sister. He wouldn’t take a bite even when the lorry stopped in
Mallow.’

‘I would not,’ the man said emphatically. ‘Would you stop if the Lord
called you? What did I say to you? Did I say, “No man must delay the
Lord when the Lord calls.”?’

“You did.’

‘Will I go and get Sister Margaret?’ asked the door-keeper timidly.

‘Never mind,’ said Clare. ‘I’ll get her myself. Sit down, poor man,
until I see if I can get the key of the cemetery.’

Sister Clare padded off and roused old Margaret from her
devotions. Margaret was cranky. She had rheumatics and knew the sort
of people that came to convents at that unearthly hour. She wished the
door sister would have a bit of sense. Look at the wetting she was
going to get all on account of this nonsense!

‘Never mind,’ said Clare, ‘give me the keys and I’ll go myself’.

‘You’ll do nothing of the kind,’ said Margaret sourly. She always
resented the suggestion that she was getting too old for her job.

She spent a deliberately long time searching for heavy boots ‘that
wouldn’t cramp her feet’, for shawls, for a good umbrella, and Clare
was ready long before she had found them. At last they went downstairs
together. Margaret did not pretend to see the ‘tramps’ as she called
them, and stalked noisily out, opening her umbrella, clanking her keys
and complaining loudly at the inconvenience to which thoughtless people
always put her. Clare beckoned to the ‘tramps’, and they fell in,
humbly and silently, behind the two nuns. The rain thumped on the
umbrellas that wavered before them, seeking a path through the wind.

As she opened the cemetery gate Margaret swung round on the man and
said with a snarl:

‘You ought to have more sense at this hour of your life than to bring
out that unfortunate child in the rain. But of course it won’t matter
to you if he gets double-pneumonia from it!’

‘The Lord knows his own business best,’ the man replied gruffly.

‘Ech, you and the Lord!’ growled Margaret with unintentional
irreverence. ‘You make me sick.’

The rain was beating about them with a perfect abandon of
malevolence. Margaret lifted her skirts and hobbled at a run to the
little shelter where the pilgrims were wont to sit. Covered in ivy, and
hung with crutches, surgical boots, beads, crosses and scapulars, it
had no furniture but a low bench placed beneath the statue of the
Blessed Virgin. Margaret sat down and watched the others glumly.

‘Go on!’ she said scornfully.

‘Kneel down and say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys with me,’
directed Clare, determined to keep up her athletic optimism under old
Margaret’s fire; and putting a bit of bagging on the edge of the tomb,
she bravely knelt on it. Without a moment’s hesitation the man knelt
in a pool of water beside the grave, and his wife followed him. Clare
gave out the prayers and the two ‘tramps’ answered them. At every
response the man looked at the child in his arms as though awaiting
some miraculous transformation.

‘In the name of the Father and of the Son—’ Clare concluded, and rose.

As she did so, the man tossed aside the heap of rags that hung about
the child, stood above the tomb that was filled to the brim with water,
and before she could protest had put him standing in it. The child
screamed and old Margaret gave a squeal of rage.

‘Aaaah, you madman, you madman!’ she cried, and ran out of the shelter
towards him.

‘Let him alone, now, do,’ he said.

He removed his arm; the child stood alone for a moment, then toppled
helplessly, face forward, into the icy water. He screamed again. His
father bent forward and lifted him with one arm.

‘Walk!’ he shouted.

‘Let him out, let him out, you fool!’ hissed Margaret at his elbow.

The man put out his other hand and saved the child from falling again.

‘Walk!’ he said, and pushed him gently forward.

The boy put out one leg timidly; he drew it back and put out the
other. His father let go of him once more.

‘Walk!’ he said remorselessly.

And then the miracle really happened, for the child began to
walk. Sobbing hysterically he tottered from one end of the tomb to the
other, the water reaching to his middle.

‘Do it again,’ his father said commandingly. The nuns were now almost
oblivious of the elements, even of the child, as they watched him
perilously traverse the little bath, drenched and shivering from
shoulder to heel. Margaret made the sign of the cross.

‘Again,’ the man rapped out. The child’s strength was clearly giving
way; his progress grew slower and the legs bent under his weight. But
his father was satisfied.

‘Praise be to you, God,’ he said at last, lifting the child out of the
tomb, and putting him on the ground by his side. ‘Catch his hand,
Birdie, and we’ll walk him down.’

‘Say an act of thanksgiving,’ suggested Sister Clare.

‘And carry him down,’ added Margaret solidly.

After this the man was taken to the gardener’s house where a dry suit
and overcoat were provided for him; the mother and son came to the
convent and had their clothes dried. They had breakfast together; the
man was very loud-voiced and complacent, and ate a great deal with no
suggestion of embarrassment, but his wife was very shy and only nibbled
at her food.

The whole community gathered to say good-bye to them and embrace the
child who had received such a signal mark of heavenly favour. The man
shook hands with them all, one by one telling them very loudly that he
knew when the Lord was speaking to him; he wasn’t the sort of man who
would raise a false alarm. By way of thanksgiving, the Mother Superior
gave him a ten shilling note. This he received and pocketed, not
without a certain amount of surprise, but with no undignified
expressions of gratitude.

From the windows the sisters watched him go down the avenue, with his
wife, the child, for their especial edification, being made to toddle
between them. Then when he got tired his father bundled him up once
more, and they set off at a quick pace for home.

All that day and for several days after, the community was in great
glee and could talk of nothing but the miracle. Only old Margaret
seemed in the least dissatisfied. At moments her nose would rise like a
shining red island in a wide sea of wrinkles—a sort of involuntary
grimace of distaste, which was immediately followed by a quick grab for
her beads or a hasty sign of the cross. But her only expression of
opinion was when she mentioned to an old crony that, thanks be to God
for his infinite mercies, you couldn’t expect to get used to miracles
after you reached the age of seventy.

(1934)