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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "By the Good Sainte Anne," Anna Chapin Ray crafts a compelling narrative that immerses readers in the intertwining lives of her characters against the backdrop of early 20th-century America. The novel blends elements of realism with rich, evocative descriptions and dialogue that reflect the social norms and challenges of the time. Ray's ability to delineate the nuances of personal relationships and moral dilemmas showcases her keen understanding of human psychology, making each character's journey both relatable and profound. This work reflects the burgeoning American literary movement, which increasingly sought to explore the complexity of human emotions and societal expectations. Anna Chapin Ray, an acclaimed writer of her time, drew heavily from her own experiences as a teacher and social advocate, which undoubtedly influenced her portrayal of the characters' struggles and triumphs. Born into a family of educators, Ray's commitment to social reform and her interest in the intricacies of human interaction can be seen as a foundation for her writing. Her works often fuse themes of personal agency with wider societal implications, inviting readers to reflect on their values and choices. "By the Good Sainte Anne" is highly recommended for readers who appreciate character-driven narratives steeped in social commentary. Ray's profound insights into the human condition, coupled with her vivid storytelling, make this novel an enriching experience. This engaging work beckons both literary scholars and casual readers to explore the depths of morality, loyalty, and the influence of society on personal identity.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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By the Good Sainte Anne
Table of Contents
A STORY OF MODERN QUEBEC
BY
ANNA CHAPIN RAY
Author of “Teddy, Her Book,” “Phebe, Her Profession,” “Ursula’s Freshman,” “Nathalie’s Chum,” “The Dominant Strain,” etc.
Toronto The Musson Book Co.Limited
All rights reserved
Published April, 1904
TO
S. M. P. M.
BRITISHER
IN TOKEN OF AMITY
By the Good Sainte Anne
CHAPTER ONE
Petulantly Nancy Howard cast aside her letter and buried her chin in her cupped palms.
“Oh, the woes of having a learned father!” she sighed. “Here is Joe’s letter, telling me how everything is starting up at home; and here am I, Nancy Howard, buried in this picturesque, polyglot wilderness, just because my sire feels himself moved to take a vacation from medicine in order to study history at first hand! I wish he would let his stupid monograph go to the winds, and take me home in time for the Leighton’s dinner, next week.”
She picked up the scattered sheets of her letter and ran them over once more, holding up her left hand, as she did so, to cut off the dazzling sunshine from the white paper. It was a pretty hand, slim, strong and tapering. Prettier still was her head, erect and crowned with piles of reddish-brown hair. It was not without apparent reason that Nancy Howard had been, for the past year, one of the most popular girls of her social circle at home.
At the third page, her brows wrinkled thoughtfully. Dropping the loose sheets into her lap, she once more fell to musing aloud.
“It does seem to me that Joe is seeing a good deal of Persis Routh. I never thought he liked her especially well. But anyway I am out of all the fun. Space isn’t the only thing that makes distance. Up here, I am at least two hundred years away from home. How long have I been here? Eight, no, nine days.” Suddenly she laughed. “At least, it has been a period of fasting and meditation. I believe I’ll count it as a novena to the Good Sainte Anne. Perhaps she will manufacture a miracle in my behalf, and get up a little excitement for me. Fancy an excitement in this place!”
“B’jour, mam’selle.”
Nancy turned alertly, as the voice broke in upon her musings.
“Bon jour, madame,” she answered, with a painstaking French which laid careful stress upon each silent letter and separated the words into an equal number of distinct sentences. At present, it was her latest linguistic accomplishment, and she aired it with manifest pride.
Pausing midway over the stile, the old woman brushed her face with the apron that hung above her tucked-up skirt.
“Why not you go to the church?” she asked.
Nancy breathed a sigh of relief, as the talk lapsed into her mother tongue. Like most Americans, she preferred that conversational eccentricities should be entirely upon the other side, and she questioned how far she could go upon the strength of her own three words. Nevertheless, she framed her reply on the idioms of her companion.
“Why for should I go?”
The woman set down her pail of water on the top step of the stile. Then she planted herself just below it, with her coarse boots resting on the crisp brown turf.
“We go to church, all the days,” she admonished Nancy sternly.
The girl smiled irrepressibly.
“So I have noticed,” she said, half under her breath. Then she added hastily, “But we do not.”
“Are you Catholique?”
Nancy shook her head.
“Too bad! But surely you can pray in any church.”
This time, Nancy felt a rebuke.
“Yes,” she assented; “but I am not used to going, every day.”
“No. No?” The second no was plainly interrogative. “But the Good Sainte Anne only does those miracle to them that pray without ceasing.”
The girl faced about sharply.
“Madame Gagnier, have you ever seen a miracle?”
The wide flat hat nodded assent.
“A real, true miracle?”
“Yes, so many.”
“Hh! I’d like to see one.”
Two keen old eyes peered up at her from beneath the wide hat.
“Mam’selle does not believe?”
There was reproach in the accent; but the girl answered undauntedly,—
“Not one bit. I’ll wait till I have seen one.”
Madame Gagnier shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly.
“How shall you see, having no eyes at all?”
Nancy’s brown eyes snapped in defiant contradiction of the slight put upon them. It was no part of her plan to be drawn into theological discussion. However, theological discussion being forced upon her, she had no mind to give way. Motherless from her childhood, Nancy Howard had never been trained in the purely feminine grace of suppressing her opinions.
“I not only have eyes; but I have a little common sense,” she answered aggressively.
The next instant, she was conscious of a sudden wave of contrition. Madame Gagnier unclasped her wrinkled hands and crossed herself devoutly.
“Then may the Good Sainte Anne open your eyes!” she responded, with gentle simplicity. “You carry her name. Pray that she take you under her protection, and work this miracle in your behalf. She is all-gracious, and her goodness has not any limits at all.”
Impulsively the girl rose from her seat on the ground, crossed to the stile and dropped down on its lowest step.
“Madame Gagnier, I was very rude,” she said, with equal simplicity.
Then silence dropped over them, the silence of the country and of the past. Forgetful of the letter she had let slip to the ground, forgetful of the coarse, mannish boots beside her own dainty ties, the girl allowed her gaze to wander back and forth across the view. It had grown so familiar to her during the last nine days, interminable days to the energetic, society-loving American girl who had chafed at her exile from the early gayeties of the awakening season in town.
Fifty feet away stood her temporary prison, a long, narrow stone house coated with shining white plaster. Above its single story, the pointed roof shot up sharply, broken by two dormer windows and topped with a chimney at either end, the one of stone, the other of brick. The palings in front of the house were white, dotted with their dark green posts; but, the house once passed, the neat palings promptly degenerated into a post-and-rail fence guiltless of paint and crossed with a stile at important strategic points connected with the barn. For one hundred feet in front of the house, the smooth-cropped lawn rolled gently downward. Then it dropped sharply from the crest of the bluff in an almost perpendicular grassy wall reaching down to the single long street of Beaupré, two hundred feet below. The crest of the bluff was dotted by an occasional farmhouse, each reached by its zigzag trail up the slope; but, in the street beneath, the houses met in two continuous, unbroken lines, parallel to that other continuous line of the mighty river. The river was mud-colored, to-day; and the turf about her was browned by early frosts; but the Isle of Orleans lay blue in the middle distance, and, far to the north, Cap Tourmente rested in a purple haze. At her feet, the white sail of a stray fishing-boat caught the sunlight and tossed it back to her, and, nearer still, the gray twin spires of Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré rose in the clear October air.
“Mother of the Holy Virgin, protector of sailors, healer of the faithful, patron saint of the New France.” Dame Gagnier was rehearsing the attributes of the saint to herself in her own harsh patois.
The girl interrupted her ruthlessly.
“What an enormous train!” she exclaimed.
“Eh?”
Nancy pointed to the long line of cars crawling up to the station beside the church.
“Long train. Many cars,” she explained slowly.
Dame Gagnier’s eyes followed the pointing finger.
“Yes. It is a pilgrimage,” she answered.
The girl scrambled to her feet.
“Really? A pilgrimage! I thought it was too late in the season. Do you suppose there will be a miracle?” she questioned eagerly.
Under the wide hat, the eyes lighted and the wrinkled lips puckered into a smile.
“Mam’selle does not believe in those miracle,” Madame Gagnier reminded her.
Nancy’s shoulders shaped themselves into an American travesty of the inimitable French shrug.
“I am always open to conviction,” she announced calmly.
“Eh?”
“I am going to see for myself.”
“Mam’selle will go to church?”
“Yes; that is, if you are sure it is a pilgrimage.”
“What else?” In her turn, Madame Gagnier pointed to the train whence a stream of humanity was pouring into the square courtyard of the Basilica.
“You are sure? I don’t want to break my neck for nothing, scrambling down your ancestral driveway.”
“Eh?”
For the thousandth time during the past nine days, Nancy felt an unreasoning rage against the deliberate monosyllable that checked her whimsical talk. In time, it becomes annoying to be obliged to explain all one’s figures of speech. Abruptly she pulled herself up and began again.
“Unless you are sure it is a pilgrimage, I do not wish to walk down the steep slope,” she amended.
“Yes. It is a pilgrimage from Lake Saint John. My son told me. It is the last pilgrimage of the year.”
Nancy clasped her hands in rapture.
“Glory be!” she breathed fervently. “I am in great luck, to-day, for they said that it was too late in the year to expect any more of them. The Good Sainte Anne is working in my behalf. Now, if she will only produce a miracle, I’ll be quite content. Good by, Madame Gagnier!”
Madame Gagnier nodded, as she looked after the alert, erect figure.
“Mam’selle does not believe in those miracle,” she said calmly. “Well, she shall see.”
The girl stooped to pick up her letters. Then swiftly she crossed the lawn and entered the house. Outside a closed door, she paused and tapped softly.
“Come in.” The answering voice was impersonal, abstracted.
Pushing open the door, Nancy entered the little sitting-room and crossed to the desk by the sunny window looking out on the river.
“Daddy dear, are you going to come with me, for an hour or two?”
The figure before the desk lost its scholarly abstraction and came back to the present. The student of antiquity had changed to the adoring father of a most modern sort of American girl; and his eyes, leaving the musty ecclesiastical records, brightened with a wholly worldly pride in his pretty daughter.
“What now?”
“A pilgrimage. A great, big pilgrimage, the last one of the year,” she said eagerly. “I’m going down to see it. Surely you’ll go, too.”
He shook his head.
“Oh, do,” she urged. “You ought to see it, as a matter of history. It is worth more than tons of old records, this seeing middle-age miracles happening in these prosy modern days.”
“Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré isn’t Lourdes, Nancy,” he cautioned her.
“No; but the guide-books say it is only second to Lourdes,” she answered undauntedly. “Anyway, I want to see what is happening. Won’t you come, really, daddy?”
His eyes twinkled, as they looked up into her animated face.
“Nancy, I am sixty-five years old, and that trail up the hill is worse than the Matterhorn. If you follow the zigzags, you walk ten miles in order to accomplish one hundred feet; if you strike out across country, you have to wriggle up on all fours. I know, for I have tried it. It isn’t a seemly thing for a man of my years to come crawling home, flat on his stomach.”
She laughed, as she stood drumming idly on the table.
“I am sorry. It is so much more fun to have somebody to play with. Still, I shall go, even if I must go alone.”
She started towards the door; then turned to face him, as he added hastily,—
“And, if you see Père Félicien, ask him when I can examine those last records by Monseigneur Laval. I shall be here, tell him, about ten days longer.”
Nancy’s face fell.
“Ten mortal days! Oh, daddy!”
“Yes, I shall need as much time as that. I prefer to finish up my work here, before I go on to Quebec.”
“And how long do you mean to stay in Quebec?” she asked.
The minor cadence in her tone escaped her father’s ears. He patted the papers before him caressingly.
“It is impossible to tell. Four or five weeks, I should say. That ought to give me time to gather my materials.”
Nancy loved her gay home life; but she also loved her father. She tossed him a kiss as she left the room; nevertheless, the smile that accompanied the kiss was rather forlorn and wavering. Once outside the door, however, she freed her mind.
“Ten more days here, and a month in that hole of a Quebec! It will be Thanksgiving, before we get home. Think of all the fun I shall be losing!” She pinned on her hat with a series of energetic pries and pushes. Then she added fervently, “Oh, Good Sainte Anne, do get up the greatest miracle of all, and produce something or somebody that shall add a little variety to my existence! I’ll give fifty cents to the souls in purgatory, if you’ll only be good enough to rescue my soul from this absolute boredom of boredoms.”
Surely, never was more unorthodox prayer directed upward from any shrine. However, the Good Sainte Anne chanced to be in a propitious mood, that day.
CHAPTER TWO
Mr. Cecil Barth was unfeignedly low in his mind, that morning. The causes were various and sundry.
First of all, Quebec was a bore. In the second place, the only people to whom he had brought letters of introduction had most inconsiderately migrated to Vancouver, and, fresh from his English university, he was facing the prospect of a solitary winter before he could go out into ranch life in the spring. A Britisher of sorts, it had not appeared to him to be necessary to inform himself in advance regarding the conditions, climatic and social, of the new country to which he was going. Now, too late, he recognized his mistake. A third grievance lay in the non-arrival of the English mail, that morning; and the fourth and most fatal of all lurked in the kindly efforts of his table companion to draw him into the conversation. To his mind, there was no reason that the swarthy, black-browed little Frenchman at his elbow should offer him any comments upon the state of the weather. The Frenchman had promptly retired from the talk; but his dark eyes had lighted mirthfully, as they had met the asphalt-like stare of his neighbor’s eyeglasses. Adolphe St. Jacques possessed his own fair share of a sense of humor; and Cecil Barth was a new element in his experience.
“Monsieur has swallowed something stiff that does not agree with him,” he observed blandly to his fellow student across the table; and Barth, whose French was of Paris, not of Canada, was totally at a loss to account for their merriment.
For the past week, the group of students and the chatter of their Canadian patois had been anathema to him. He understood not a word of their talk, and consequently, with the extreme sensitiveness which too often accompanies extreme egotism, he imagined that it related solely to himself. In vain he tried to avoid their hours for meals. Rising betimes, he met them at the hurried early breakfast which betokened an eight o’clock lecture. The next morning, dreary loitering in his room only brought him into the midst of the deliberate meal which was the joyous prerogative of their more leisurely days. Barth liked The Maple Leaf absolutely; but he hated the students of his own table with a cordial and perfect hatred.
Dropped from the Allan Line steamer, one bright September morning, as a matter of course he had been driven up through the gray old town to the Chateau Frontenac. A week at the Chateau had been quite enough for him. To his mind, its luxurious rooms had been altogether too American. Too American, also, were its inhabitants. He shrank from the obvious brides in their new tailor gowns and their evident absorption in their companions. He resented those others who, more elderly or more detached, roused themselves from their absorption to bestow a friendly word on the solitary young Englishman. Their clothes, their accent, and, worst of all, their manners betrayed their alien birth. No self-respecting woman, bride or no bride, ever wore such dainty shoes. No man of education ever stigmatized an innocent babe as cunning. And there was no, absolutely no, excuse for the familiar greetings bestowed upon himself by complete strangers.
“Americans!” quoth Mr. Cecil Barth. “Oh, rather!”
And, next morning, he went in search of another hostelry.
He found it at The Maple Leaf, just across the Place d’Armes. Fate denied to him the privilege of sleeping in the quaint little pension whose roof was sanctified by having once sheltered his compatriot, Dickens; he could only take his meals there, and hunt for a room outside. At noon, he came to dinner, too exhausted by his fruitless search to care whether or not the students were at the table, or on it, or even under it. Go back to the Chateau he would not; but he began to fear lest the only alternative lay in a tent pitched on the terrace in the lee of the Citadel and, in that wilderness, he questioned whether anything so modern as a tent could be bought.
After dinner, the Lady of The Maple Leaf took his affairs in hand. She possessed the two essentials, a kindly heart and a sense of humor. She had seen stray Britishers before; she had a keen perception of the artistic fitness of things and, by twilight, Mr. Cecil Barth was sitting impotently upon his boxes in the third-floor front room of the town house of the Duke of Kent. He had very little notion of the way to proceed about unpacking himself. Nevertheless, as he put on his glasses and stared at the panelled shutters of his ducal casement, he felt more at peace with the world than he had done for two long weeks.
In after years, he never saw fit to divulge the details of his unpacking. It accomplished itself chiefly by the simple method of his tossing out on the floor whatever things lay above any desired object, of leaving those things on the floor until he became weary of tangling his feet in them, then of stowing them away in any convenient corner that offered itself. By this simple method, however, he had contrived to gain space enough to permit of his tramping up and down the floor, and it was there that he had been taking petulant exercise, that bright October morning.
At last he halted at the window and stood looking down into the street beneath. The Duke of Kent’s house has the distinction, rare in Saint Louis Street, of standing well back within its own grounds, and, from his window, Barth could watch the leisurely procession passing to and fro on the wooden sidewalks which separated the gray stone buildings from the paler gray stripe of asphalt between. Even at that early hour, it was a variegated procession. Tailor-made girls mingled with black-gowned nuns, soldiers from the Citadel, swaggering jauntily along, jostled a brown-cowled Franciscan friar or a portly citizen with his omnipresent umbrella, while now and then Barth caught sight of a scarlet-barred khaki uniform, or of the white serge robe and dove-colored cloak of a sister from the new convent out on the Grand Allée.
Barth had travelled before; he had seen many cities; nevertheless, he acknowledged the charm of this varied humanity, so long as it remained safely at his feet. Then he glanced diagonally across the road to the Montcalm headquarters, and discovered the patch of sunshine that lay over its pointed gables.
“Jolly sort of day!” he observed to himself. “I believe I’ll try to see something or other.”
With a swift forgiveness for the past days of scurrying clouds, of the woes of moving, even of students and Americans, he turned away from the window, caught up his hat, stick and gloves, and ran lightly down the staircase. Once out in the street, he strayed past the English cathedral, past the gray old front of the Basilica, turned to his left, then turned again and wandered aimlessly down Palace Hill. Ten minutes later, he stopped beside an electric train and watched the crowd scrambling into its cars.
“Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré,” he read from the label in a rear window. “What can be the attraction there? Oh, I know; it’s that American Lourdes place. How awfully American to go to its miracles by electricity! I believe I’ll go, too. It might be rather interesting to see what an American miracle is like.”
Ticket in hand, he boarded the train, already moving out of the station. He had some difficulty in finding a seat to his liking, since a man of finical habits objects to having two bundle-laden habitants in the same seat with himself. However, by the time he was sliding along under the bluff at Beauport, with the Saint Lawrence glistening on his right, he decided that the morning was ideal for a country ride. By the time the train halted opposite the Falls of Montmorency, he had forgotten the ubiquitous students at his table, and, as he entered into the fertile valley of L’Ange Gardien, he came to the conclusion that chance had led him wisely. Just how wisely, as yet he was in ignorance.
It was still long before midday when the train drew up at Sainte Anne station, and Barth stepped out upon the platform. Then in amazement he halted to look about him. Close at hand, an arched gateway led into a broad square garden, bounded by gravel walks and bordered on two sides by a row of little shrines, aged and weatherbeaten. On the third side stood the church of the Good Sainte Anne, its twin gray towers rising sharply against the blue October sky and flanking the gilded statue of the saint poised on the point of the middle roof. Around the four sides of the courtyard there slowly filed a motley procession of humanity, here a cripple, there one racked by some mental agony, the sick in mind and body, simple-hearted and trusting, each bringing his secret grief to lay at the feet of the Good Sainte Anne. Mass was already over, and the procession had formed again to march to the shrine and to the holy altar.
Barth’s eyes roved over the shabby procession, over the faces, dull and heavy, or alert with trust; then he turned to the rose-arched figure borne on the shoulders of the chanting priests, and his blood throbbed in his veins, as he listened to their rich, sonorous voices.
“A pilgrimage!” he ejaculated to himself. “And now for a miracle! May the saint be propitious, for once in a way!”
Following hard on the heels of the crowd, he pushed his way through one of the wide doors, gave a disdainful glance at the huge racks of crutches and braces left by long generations of pious pilgrims, looked up at the vaulted roof, forward to the huge statue of Sainte Anne half-way up the middle aisle, and drew a deep breath of content. The next minute, he choked, as the stifling atmosphere of the place swept into his throat and nostrils.
“Oh, by George!” said Mr. Cecil Barth.
However, once there, he resolved to see the spectacle to the end. Furthermore, Barth was artist to the core of his being, and those sonorous voices, now ringing down from the organ loft above, could atone for much stale air. A step at a time, he edged forward cautiously and took his place not far from the altar rail.
