"HE'S AN ENGLISHMAN, I'LL WAGER A FRANC."
(See page 20)
Author of "Dupes," "Partners," etc.
Illustrated by  |
BOSTON
DANA ESTES & COMPANY
Publishers
Copyright,
BY DANA ESTES & COMPANY
All rights reserved
Published August, 1903
WHITEWASH
Colonial Press
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. SImonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
THE July sun blazed unrelentingly upon the wide, hard-baked road that led, straight as a giant ruler, across the forlorn level country. Gorse and stubble, ground-pine and intensely green, wiry broom covered the moors, from which a quivering radiance of heat mounted to the molten sky, the horizon shook with it, and the distant dome of the Basilica of St. Anne of Auray, with its golden statue, wavered upward like a white flame.
It was St. Anne's Eve, and the incoming human tide was near its flood. The following day would bring the great feast, when the cure-working statue would be carried in procession. The throng pushed forward in anticipation. Here were ancient and dilapidated diligences, called into service by the influx of visitors, carts, drays, carriages of all ages and previous conditions of servitude, heavy, high swinging landaus, with emblazoned panels, bringing the chatelaines of the neighborhood, even the pumping, banging automobiles that all fashionable France had gone mad over. Mixed in and about the carriage pilgrims came the rank and file of foot farers: men from Beltz, with white trousers and coats of peacock blue; women of Lorient, in the dress made famous by the "chocolatière" of Dresden; peasants of Pont-Aven in their pleated collars and wide-winged head-dresses; deputations from Morlaix, wearing the fifteenth century "hénin" in all its glory; women of Point l'Abbé, broad-shouldered and square-hipped, marching through the heat in multitudinous black cloth skirts and yellow embroidered jackets. And in all alike, men, women, and children, the deep, contained fire of fanatic faith.
An ancient and dilapidated vehicle of the period of the first Empire, driven by a pompous peasant of Auray, in full regalia, swung from side to side in the jostling mass, like a distressed ship in a human sea. Reclining on the threadbare velvet cushions, four girls, of obviously foreign extraction, volleyed with assorted cameras on the crowd about them. Many shrank from the black boxes in fear of witchcraft, others, more experienced in the ways of strangers, grinned broadly or became suddenly petrified into awkwardness. From their coign of vantage the cameras continued to snap with regardless vehemence.
"Hold on, stop the driver! I want to take that ditch full of horrors," exclaimed the smallest of the quartette, a slim, blonde girl of eighteen or twenty, who answered cheerfully to the nick name of "Shorty."
A red-haired young woman rose from her seat.
"Oh, gorgeous person on the box-seat, have the obligeance to restrain Bucephalus."
The peasant grinned, and obeying her gesture, which was the only thing he understood, caused so sudden a halt, that the occupants of the Empire coach fell violently into each other's arms. Upon the stopping of the carriage, an immediate congestion of pedestrians and horses took place in the rear, and the pilgrimage was profaned by remarks not intended for the ears of St. Anne. With true American independence the four girls calmly proceeded to focus their kodaks at the line of writhing wretches, who, seeing the attention they were attracting, dragged themselves nearer, whining dolorously.
"For goodness sake, move on! the smell is positively fetid!" exclaimed a brown young woman of about thirty.
"Boston, you are a born obstructionist. Get out of my picture, will you? There are horrors enough in it without you."
Of the four, Victoria Claudel was, perhaps, the most noticeable. As she often said of herself, "she was made up of odds and ends." Her small, well-shaped head was set on a full, strong throat. She had very wide shoulders, a tremendous depth of chest, suggestive of great vitality, feet unusually small, and well-formed hands, unexpectedly large. The face that shone out from the shade of a battered campaign hat showed the same irregularity—a short, straight nose, large, oblique gray eyes, and a small, dainty mouth in a strong jaw. The forehead was somewhat high, and from it sprung, variously "cowlicked" and very unruly, a great mass of red-black hair, part of which crowning glory was at that moment attempting a descent upon her shoulders, and hung in a loop besprinkled with helpless hairpins. She was not beautiful, but far more than pretty. Vitality, power, vigorous impatience, and ingrained humor seemed to surround her as an atmosphere rings its planet.
Victoria put down her camera and distributed a handful of coppers among the pilgrim subjects.
"Give me change for a franc?" the red-haired Sonia Palintzka begged.
"Can't do it," Victoria returned. "Change it when you get to the hotel. I believe you are a reincarnation of Judas—I never knew you when you weren't trying to change your thirty pieces of silver."
Shorty fell over her companions in her haste. "Oh, look! See those peasants with the apple-green sleeves and the blue bodices. Heavens! he's going to run them down, and they are so beautiful!"
The older woman disengaged herself from the tangle of Shorty's skirts. "You are perfectly insane, child; do sit still! You've taken at least four pictures without winding one off."
The girl gasped, "Oh, I believe you're right! Oh, dear! my beggars will be spoiled."
"They seemed pretty far gone already," Boston ejaculated.
Their carriage halted for a moment. A balky horse somewhere in the crowd ahead was determinedly holding back the procession. The crush had moved the Empire chaise alongside a well-appointed, green-bodied brougham, from whose window a slim woman, dressed in mourning, was anxiously leaning.
"It must be horribly dark inside the lady," murmured Victoria, in an undertone: "see how it pours out of her."
Sonia nodded, the description was so apt. Great troubled, black eyes lit up the woman's haggard face; bushy brows almost met over the thin, high bred nose; hair so intensely black that the widow's cap surmounting it seemed lighter by comparison; even her skin was seared as if by fire, yellow brown as it met the raven locks, like burned parchment. All this darkness seemed to emanate from the eyes—two tunnels of Erebus that led inward to depths incalculable.
Conscious of scrutiny, the lady raised her head. The anxiety of her face froze to haughty annoyance, and she withdrew from the window abruptly.
"Snapping turtle!" Shorty remarked.
Victoria smiled. "Did look that way. See the child with her—she's ill. I suppose they are bringing her to St. Anne."
A fair-haired girl, dressed in black and thin to emaciation, lay in the other corner of the carriage. Her little feet rested on the lap of a maid who sat opposite, holding a smelling-bottle in one hand. As if in obedience to a command, the servant leaned forward and sharply drew down the green silk window-shade, darting, as she did so, a look of unconcealed scorn at Sonia's unaffectedly interested face.
"End of Act I.—curtain!" said Victoria.
A sway and jar in the packed roadway announced that at last progress was possible. The interrupted tramp of the march again began. Somewhere in the front a chorus of men's voices intoned the ancient Breton chant of St. Anne. It spread from rank to rank, as fire whips across a prairie, till the whole throng rocked with it—an immense emotional swell.
Vic's face paled a little, and she shook her shoulders as if to throw off the hysterical contagion of the crowd.
Sonia looked sympathy. "Grips one right by the throat, doesn't it?"
There was no more stopping now. The procession in its compact thousands advanced as if lifted bodily. The weary straightened themselves, the sick lifted their heads, the eyes of the dying lit once more.
"Makes one understand the crusades," Shorty murmured, tearfully.
The resistless stream poured on to its destination, spreading out as it reached the vast paved square in front of the church, and the green acres before the Scala Santa.
The three great doors of the Basilica, opened wide, could hardly accommodate the crowd that surged toward them. The square reeked with the smell of wax candles and the perfume of incense. Up and down every converging street, and bordering the square itself, hung a deep fringe of booths—literally a fringe, for from every roof depended bunches of blessed tapers of every size and quality, from the simple one-sou candle, a foot in length, to the great decorated "cierge," four feet high and as big around as a hand could grasp. Black and yellow festoons of prayer-beads swung to and fro, rattling as the heads of purchasers displaced them. At every booth brilliantly dressed peasants bargained cannily for medals and "pocket saints."
The Empire chaise with its modern occupants drew up before the door of the largest inn, facing directly on the place. It was preceded by the green-bodied brougham, from which the maid, assisted by the landlord, was lifting the invalid. The deference with which the party was treated marked them as people of importance, and Victoria wisely concealed her impatience till the illustrious wants should be ministered to.
"We engaged our rooms weeks ago, so we're all right, you know," she said, "and they'll treat us better if we don't fluster them in handling their grandees. Suppose we sit out here at one of the little tables till the coast is clear."
Settling themselves, they eagerly watched the crowd that wove its brilliant patterns before them.
"Jolly, isn't it?" Shorty commented. "We are the only rank outsiders. Evidently the great American tourist hasn't found this out yet."
"Give them time—they will—sooner or later," Miss Bently announced, sadly; "to-morrow there will be more—that man over—there, for instance; he's an Englishman, I'll wager a franc."
"Done," and Victoria held out her hand. "No Englishman would be so fearfully and wonderfully British."
"I don't see how we're to find out," said Shorty, wistfully.
"He's going into the hotel,—we'll ask the chambermaid what room he has, and look it up on the register."
"But," objected the Russian, "there won't be what you call a register here, only those miserable little slips you have to make out and hand to the landlord—how old you are and where you were born, and what for, and who filled your teeth and where you think you'll go to when you die,—and all sorts of little personalities that might interest the police."
"That's so," Shorty nodded, gravely. "Never mind, though, we'll find out; there is always somebody who makes it his business to know everybody else's."
"Very handsome sentence. Did you make it all yourself? " Victoria grinned. "Come in, it's safe now to tackle the hotel, they have disposed of the—the—what's feminine for hidalgo?"
Their entrance into the inn in their turn brought sorrow. The landlord remembered perfectly the correspondence with the young ladies, but what was he to do? Madame de Vernon-Château-Lamion had just arrived, bringing her little daughter to the good St. Anne. She had required the best rooms—as he said before, what could he do? It was vexatious; but the child was ill, very ill.
Sonia flushed and drew herself up. It was at such moments that she gave ground for the suspicion current in the artistic circles she frequented, that concealed under her simple incognito was a name as illustrious as the Orloffs' own. "My good man," she articulated, as she quenched the fire of his eloquence by an icy glance, "you are under contract to accommodate us. If the child is ill, we will not insist on our rights; but accommodate us you must, somewhere. You know perfectly well the conditions here during the feast. We have no intention of sleeping in the square with the peasants, or doing the 'Stations of the Cross' on our knees all night in the church. Now, what are you going to do?"
The landlord looked up at her stately height, at the gold glory of her hair, at the violet fire of her eyes—and wilted.
"Madame—mademoiselle must pardon. It is unfortunate, but perhaps, if the ladies would be graciously lenient—there were—rooms—oh, not the kind he wished he might provide—but rooms—one in the wing, where two of ces dames could stay—and one"—he hesitated, and fairly gasped—"over the—the stable."
Sonia's manner was magnificent. As a queen might condescend to accept a lowly state that humbler subjects cavilled at, because, being queen, she dignified whatever lodging she deigned to honor, she inclined her head. "Take us there," she said, "and let Madame Vernon-Château-Lamion know that because of the illness of her child we will permit her to occupy our apartments."
The fat little landlord gulped, and humbly led the way to the dingy hospitality he offered.
"Too bad we can't be together," Shorty wailed, as she inspected the cubby-hole in the wing.
Once more the host, by this time reduced to positive pathos, clamored his excuses.
Sonia silenced him. "This lady," indicating Victoria, "and I will occupy the stable." Again they journeyed through a labyrinth of passages to the much-scorned chamber, which proved to be better than its promise. It was, at least, clean and roomy, and the two little hospital cots looked comfortable enough. Its simple dormer-window commanded an uninspiring view of courtyard and barn, the slope of the roof being not so great but one might step out on it with safety, or, in case of necessity, slip across to the iron ladder that posed as fire-escape for the part of the hotel buildings adjoining the lofts. This much, the American girl's hasty inspection took in as she put down her simple baggage. Sonia, glancing through the dim window-glass, commented on the ease with which one might cross from one part of the house to another by judicious use of water-pipes and roofs. "It is to be hoped," she concluded, "that pilgrims are uniformly pious, otherwise a burglar would have what you call a 'picnic' of this house."
Victoria, deep in tepid ablutions, sputtered something about willingly parting with everything but her kodak films; but Sonia persisted:
"These are servants' quarters, or hostlers'. I don't think it is right to put such people in a room like this that has window communication with every back room in the house—yes, and probably every front one, too, for one would have only to cross the roof and use the balconies."
"Oh, come, trust the Breton hostlers; they haven't imagination enough to think of anything so complicated, and unless, Sonia, you are contemplating a little burglarious expedition, we're safe enough."
Victoria wiped her hands on the diminutive towel, twisted her short skirt straight, stuffed in a handful of strong hairpins, and announced her intention of going out. Her companion slowly left the window, went through the same feminine recipe for "straightening up," and patted her friend's shoulder with impulsive irrelevance.
"Vic, you are a nice girl. I wish you would come to Russia with me this winter instead of going back to America."
Her friend smiled. "Wish I could, Sonia, but I've got to go, there's no getting out of it. It's business, you see. There will be a settling of the estate—Bob comes of age."
Sonia locked the door as they went out into the cheerless corridor that smelt not unpleasantly of hay and fodder. "Well, perhaps I'll come to America instead. I've always wanted to see what it is like."
"If you do, Sonia, I'll give you the best time you ever had in all your life. As a country, well, I don't like to be unpatriotic—you'll be disappointed; but the people make up for it—they are the whitest in the world." The gray eyes looked unutterable admiration into space.
They reached the staircase after much wandering, and descended to the floor below, turned toward the main entrance, and came face to face with the plaided, knickerbockered young man, whose back had attracted their comment. Victoria, because of her bet, favored the stranger with a long comprehensive stare as he passed. He was undeniably handsome, with fine, regular features, yellow hair concealed by a gray cap, very black eyes and eyebrows that contrasted strangely with his light mustache. He walked gracefully in spite of a slight limp.
"He is English," Sonia asserted, when well out of earshot.
Victoria shook her head. "I don't think so. I'm sure I don't know why, but I don't."
The Lorient-coifed chambermaid appeared burdened with towels and full of business. The girl confronted her. "Do you know who the young man is who just went up-stairs? He looks like some one I know, but I can't be sure."
"Oh, yes—fifty—seven." The woman patted the towels gently, as if struggling to remember among the press of patrons. "Fifty-seven—fifty-seven—came yesterday—had a headache and his dinner in his room. I think he went out awhile ago, but he didn't stay long. Seems to be expecting somebody from the way he sits by the window. English? of course. You should hear him speak French." She laughed. "His name? I don't know—oh, yes, his bag has 'J. O Farrell' marked on it; it's a cheap bag," and with this information she proceeded on her way.
"That settles it—you've lost," said Sonia.
"I suppose I have." Victoria's voice was puzzled and unconvinced.
As they emerged into the street, Shorty pounced upon them. "Come quick! There's a whole band of women from Faouët going to have their sickles blessed. Oh, it's too bad the light is going, I can't get a picture. It's fine, it's wonderful!"
Miss Bently's flat brown figure frantically beckoned them to hasten, and the three ran forward to the stone wall on which she stood, commanding a view of the church doors over the swaying heads of the crowd. A band of thirty or more women were forming in line, their black skirts kilted high, showing heavy ribbed stockings and wooden shoes. Their hard, weather-worn faces framed in the black triangular shawls that hung from under round black caps, similar to those worn by the priests of the Greek Church. In their hands they held new sickles, some naked and gleaming, some wrapped in wisps of wheat straw. Some argument of precedence was evidently in progress, which, being at last compromised, the strange procession disappeared under the sculptured arches of the portico.
"Where is the miraculous fountain, Shorty?" Sonia inquired, as the thinning crowd permitted them to descend from their perch.
"Over here. Follow me; it's a sight; Boston and I have been prospecting."
Elbowing their way across the "place," by the medal-sellers, and the mushroom villages of candlemongers, they became involved in a temporary street of cider tents, wherein, bronzed and bedecked, the men of Brittany, like men the world over, comforted first the body before grappling with that illusive and unsatisfactory thing—the soul. Under the brown sail awnings they sat, on long oak benches, drinking gravely and without noise, as is the fashion of that strange race, that takes all its pleasures, even dancing, as if Weltschmerz were the impulse. They regarded the foreigners with amiable curiosity, commenting aloud and unabashed in their rough, guttural Celtic, which is identical with the ancient and fast-disappearing language of Cornwall. To the right of the Scala Santa, the four came upon the fountain, a large and inartistic stone monument, presenting to the public a huge sign, "Beware of pickpockets," and four granite shells, from which the water flowed through sunken cisterns, resembling the tanks of a natatorium. Wide stone steps led down, and every available inch of the approaches was crowded by the faithful, old and young, high and low, bonnet and coif together. The sightless washed their eyes in the healing waters, diseased skins were laved in it, open sores and wounds were soothed and cleansed, the idiotic were baptized, those sick of internal troubles lifted it to their lips and drank. The relatives of those too ill to come filled bottles from the pools, corked them, and preciously carried them away in their arms. The crowd of worshippers constantly renewed itself, as those satisfied rose to their feet and departed with hope in their hearts and microbes in their systems. For the most part, the throng was earnest and silent. Once only a woman shrieked, casting the bandages from her wounded head. Her eyes, burning with fever, stared like two mad stars in her haggard, drawn face, as she struggled with her stalwart sons, who at last led her away, muttering and calling. A momentary hush fell upon the crowd at the fountain, a shade of doubt crept from face to face as the sound of the woman's ravings grew fainter, then, with renewed vigor, they washed and bottled and drank.
"And the miracle is," Victoria said, slowly, "that they won't all die before morning."
Miss Bently turned from the scene a trifle pale. "It is rather sickening, but I suppose if you get a good new microbe to fight your own bacilli, they have a chance of killing each other. I don't doubt there are any number of cures from that cause."
"I'm coming down to-morrow morning early," Shorty announced, "to photograph that. No one would believe us if we told about it—it's too unspeakably awful."
"Look at this, girls," Sonia interrupted, pointing to a billboard, on which, amidst the usual notice to "Beware of pickpockets," were the announcements of special indulgences—"For each step of the Scala Santa on the knees with two 'Aves' and 'a Pater,' one hundred years of purgatory remitted; for the entire Scala, ten thousand years; 'Stations of the Cross,' with 'Paters,' and 'Aves,' one thousand years."
"Haven't you seen those before?" Shorty exclaimed, with superiority. "There's a beautiful framed announcement at the foot of the holy stairs, which are just jammed full of people taking advantage of the indulgences. It makes one's knees sore to see them. Heavens! there's a whole covey of Englishwomen over there."
"Oh, that reminds me," Victoria spoke up, "I lost my bet, Boston, my love. We asked the chambermaid about the man you thought was English. It seems his name is O'Farrell, and he speaks very bad French, so I suppose that settles it—but," and she shook her head, "somehow it doesn't go; maybe he's half-and-half, perhaps his mother was French or Italian, or something. I flatter myself I'm a good guesser, and certainly he does not spell 'English' to me."
"Oh! you're too sharp," Shorty laughed, as they returned to the hotel entrance.
They had hardly crossed the threshold when they became aware of the advancing presence of the swarthy Madame Vernon-Château-Lamion. With a well-bred haughtiness she inclined her dark head, and addressed herself directly to Sonia, including Victoria in the same glance. Boston and Shorty she ignored magnificently, turning by instinct to her social equals.
"I am informed that I am indebted to you ladies for the suite I now occupy. I assure you that were it not for my daughter's critical condition I should at once seek lodgings elsewhere. As it is, I must, most unwillingly, impose upon your kindness."
"Madame," returned Victoria, "we are glad to contribute to your daughter's comfort."
"We trust," added Sonia, with unexpected gentleness, "that your prayers for her may be heard."
The mother crossed herself. "May God so will! My thanks!" she added, with a return of her frigid politeness, and with another slight bow she left them.
"What a very aristocratic old blackbird," remarked Shorty, after a pause, piqued that her blonde prettiness had attracted no acknowledgment of her existence from the gaunt countess.
"Yes," Sonia gravely assented, "she has blue blood, as you say."
"I don't say anything of the sort," Miss Bently sharply objected. "I should, from her appearance, suggest Caw's Jet Black Ink, or stove polish."
Though early, the dining-room was already crowded, which necessitated an irritating wait, but the four were at last settled at a small table, and the conversation returned to the countess.
"Did you see the lace she wore? Antique Venetian, and a gem of a piece!" Victoria spoke with a sort of detached envy.
Sonia nodded. "Yes; but what made me want to break the—what number Commandment is it, about envy?—was her pin. Did you notice it?"
"Rather!" and Victoria's face glowed with appreciation. "What was it? I never saw anything like it."
"Nor I," continued Sonia, "though I've seen—" Here she checked herself, and added, lamely, "a great deal. It was sixteenth century, I'm certain. Those pendants were unmistakable; and I think I never saw such an emerald—the size, the color!"
"It had a big flaw, though," and Victoria took up the description. "It was the marvellous delicacy of the setting and the design that struck me. I don't believe its intrinsic value is so great, even with the emerald, but the art of it, the art of it! It makes the modern work seem absolutely pot-boiling; there were old masters in jewelry as well as in paint and stone."
"I think," Sonia continued, "the two gold dolphins that surround the centre stone must have been heraldic. I believe it was a sort of acrostic of a coat-of-arms. I've seen such pieces in Russia, and I know they were used in Spain."
"Oh, stop talking like a pair of antiquaries," Shorty interrupted. "You don't know anything about it, and you re missing the circus—just look at the freaks in this—salle à manger."
The great bare room did, in fact, present an extraordinary assortment of humanity. At the upper end, a long table accommodated fifteen or twenty priests, whose black garments made a dark spot in the otherwise bright hall. Next to them, a gaily dressed, chattering party of women and men, just arrived in their automobiles from the estates of Kerkonti and Merone. The main body consisted of wealthy Breton peasants, dressed in all the gorgeousness of their feast-day clothes, and obviously uncomfortable. Here and there the inevitable, fat, greasy, commercial traveller serenely bulked, and the equally fat and oily bourgeoise-women shopkeepers of Lorient, and the other adjoining commercial cities, wielded ready knives. A few elegant but soberly dressed families attested that the aristocracy of France is by no means devoid of the faith that animated its distant forbears. An eminent journalist from Paris took notes obviously from his position by the fireplace, a well-known painter, accompanied by his equally well-known model, sat in the corner. A lonesome looking English boy, who was "doing" Brittany on his wheel, yawned by the window, and a party of very old gentlemen, who seemed to have no particular reason for attending the festival, unless, as Victoria suggested, they hoped for a Faust-like renewal of youth, completed the company.
"I don't see my Englishman," Miss Bently observed.
"Evidently his headache has come on again, and he's having his supper in his room. The chambermaid said he hadn't been well," Sonia explained.
The meal dragged on indefinitely, the frantic serving-wenches vainly trying to cope with the number of their charges. Every dish was cold or poor. Soup arrived after the meat, and vegetables with the pudding. But there was little objection. Every one was either too devout or too interested to trouble about food for the time being. The four dissimilar girls were probably as much of an incongruity as the other guests or the distorted meal. Theirs was one of those oddly combined friendships, evolved in studios, with which all dwellers in France have become familiar. At bottom there is always the stratum of common ambitions, appreciation, and Bohemianism, in spite of unbridgeable divergencies of character and traditions.
Just now the four were equally delighted. Miss Bently and Sonia with the paintable qualities of the pilgrimage; Shorty, with the photographic possibilities, and Victoria with the human passion of excitement and faith that ran riot in and about her. Although her training had been in the field of applied art, she was slowly but certainly turning toward the alluring fields of literature, her short experience with newspaper work having bred ambitions. Now, unconsciously, she groped for words into which to translate the pictures and the emotions of the hour, and went about with sentences speaking themselves in her head—so good sometimes that she longed to jot them down, yet never quite dared because of a curious self-consciousness that made her hate to explain her occupation to her companions. "Hysteria, the most instantly contagious of diseases," she caught herself murmuring, as, supper finished, they again sought the square and its picturesque gatherings. "I wonder, if it is possible for any one in his senses to remain unmoved by such an immense and intensely human cry of faith—the faith of the children, and catered to as to children." What marvellous charm was in the lights, the incense, the fountain of healing, the fairy-tale statue discovered, though buried, because of the great radiance that shone over the spot! What mattered it that antiquarians had pronounced it a Venus, relic of the Roman occupation? Converted into St. Anne and re-carved, no saint in Christendom is more efficacious to cure—"as bread pills cure a child," she concluded, aloud. Surprised to hear her own voice, she looked up. She had become separated from her friends, and had somehow drifted to the church door. Impulsively, she entered and knelt for a moment, the better to take in the mystery of the great building, whose mighty pillars sprang upwards like giant spouts of water, and spread across the arched ceiling in a spray of lacy stone. The lights were dim, but below, by the great white altar, by the side chapels and at each pillar foot, thousands upon thousands of candles sent up a radiance mellowed and softened in the immensity of the nave.
The darkness of confessionals and recessed chapels was gemmed with colored lamps, that vaguely showed the lines of waiting penitents. The place reeked with incense, the odor of melted wax and the vague heaviness of crowded human breaths.
The subdued shuffling of feet, the audible