THE , PROCESSION
By KATHARINE GORDON
IT was the Sunday after Corpus Christi, and they were having a procession at the Catholic Church, "weather permitting." Cam- bridge has been for generations a centre of religion, and its Catholic Church is generally called just that. It has an authority and a position denied to St. Aloysius at Oxford. People cycle to attend Mass from all the little East Anglian villages in the flat lands round Cambridge ; and about it gathers something of the atmosphere of a big church in a small French town. It is something to do with the fact that Cambridge is, after all, a market town ; all the people in church look as if they might be carrying fish or vegetables. It was St. John's Eve, too, and the town was full of many kinds of distrac- tion. Midsummer Common was literally covered with the Mid- summer Fair, the first since the war. It was shut on Sunday, and the fair _ folk, with their incredible moustaches, teeth, com- plexions and ear-rings, were swaggering about the town. In Trump- ington Street I heard a Salvation Army band playing.
Weather did permit. It was a real Midsummer's Eve, with magic in the warm air. Leaves hung thick and green over the Pieces ; the flowers were stiff and splendid. The sun was lambent and genial. It was weather when one is just not lazy enough to leave things undone. The heat was heavenly. It did not destroy energy, though it made it wisely languid. So I decided, after all, to take my son James, aged is months, to his first procession. I pushed the battered pram all along the little thoroughfares that have combined into a herring-bone of a main street, and at last we arrived at Lensfield Road. There was a small crowd outside the presbytery garden, and there was a policeman. He thought it a great joke, and was very good-humoured. The only sign yet of the procession was the troop of young girls chattering excitedly in the garden. They all had long net veils over' the uncompromising English ginghams that cried of sport.
Another small crowd gathered near me, and the policeman crossed over to us to keep order, laughing to himself more than ever at thel thought, perhaps, of this mild assembly of women and babes ever causing trouble. A middle-aged woman with a round, rosy face, dressed in black and white and wearing white beads, strayed in front of me and the pram. James was standing up expectantly, as he always does in the pram, pretending he is the prow-piece of a ship. Then the crowd of young girls settled into a double file, and began to be absorbed into the far door of the church. Faint sounds of singing were heard, and then the doorkeeper came and opened the western doors that are usually shut, and then the gates into the street. He was followed in a few moments by a young priest, who scanned the street to see that there was no traffic, and stood there beckoning the procession on. He, too, like the policeman, had secret smile on his face.
Then the procession really came. An acolyte headed it, carrying a standard crucifix. After film came a troop of tiny girls. They were all dressed in their best, and, unlike those of the older girls, their dresses were not conspicuously English. Most were in short white frocks. One had a long white satin frock. Another had a pale pink silk evening dress, all peaked draperies, with a Grecian effect. Im- probably, she looked lovely. They all had white veils, and many of them had wreaths of flowers. Their hands were joined in prayer. Behind them came the small boys in ordinary suits, but each with a red ambassadorial sash across the chest.
They all stood still, waiting for the procession to form up behind them. Then we all stared. What was that dark, grim phalanx behind the small boys? It seemed to have materialised as if by magic. We had been absorbed in looking at the little innocent girls, and we had not seen these men emerge from the church. A small child beside me said : " Who are those people in black?" His mother, instinctively kind, said "Hush." They were not in black ; they were mostly in very dark green. Incredulously, we looked from their dark suits to their faces. All Nordic, all unmistakably German. They were German prisonexs of war. And they were walking in the Catholic procession. I think tears came into the eyes of many of the watchers. To my surprise I found. them stream- ing down my face. I looked at the faces of the prisoners. Some were savage and rough. Some were very young. One looked like a German philosopher. They all looked almost sightless, as if they had long been deprived of daylight. It must make you look like that to be a prisoner. One—it was the philosophical one—was wearing, with a proud humility, his grey uniform. Another had his Fatherland's cap pressed under his arm. One or two of them looked at the small crow.d timidlY ; then quickly looked away again, straight in front.
I longed to be able to show what I felt, to make some gesture of acceptance. But there was nothing one could do. Then the procession started moving, and the small white-frocked children -began to sing "0 Salutaris Hostia," and the Germans began to sing as they began to march. Behind them came the Franciscans ; then two small boys with baskets from which they scattered red and pink rose petals. After that came the canopy, and the canon in a golden cope, held up by two young priests, also in gold. Behind them were the worthy men of the town, and after that I have forgotten, for my thoughts were still with the prisoners, and the tears were still, in my eyes. As I turned the pram to go away, I caught sight of the woman in black and white. Half-ashamed of my tear-stainedi face, I blurted out to her, "It was so moving to see the German; prisoners. Who thought of it? I have been so worried about them." She said, "Thank you. I am a German. We are not all bad."
Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem . . .
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