The community elected the present Prior almost in spite of themselves. He was so obviously intended to be a Superior. He had been consistently superior in every branch of knowledge that he took up, and so, despite his youth, Father Prior was elected. He had his own ideas about the spirit of the Order. He began by eliminating artificial altar flowers and tinsel-robed images, and made a clean sweep of the soiled paper lilies that adorned each shrine. So many things had to be replaced.
Old Brother Giles wept openly over the new crib, introduced on Father Prior's first Christmas in command. The figures were white, and had no eyes: the pupils were merely carved, not coloured. The Holy Child was represented as a sleeping infant wrapped in swaddling bands, and there was no ox and no ass — simply the three figures in a plain white-walled setting. No tinselled cherubs, no Chinese lanterns. People who really know about those things congratulated the Prior on his crib.
So disconsolate was Brother Giles that at length the Father Prior gave him permission to erect a grotto in the orchard for the reception of the discarded figures. All of them — Our Lady, St Joseph, the little cherubs with gauze wings sticking out of their necks, the ox and the ass, and the smiling Holy Child — found a home out in the orchard, in a grotto built of sticks and branches of evergreen. The poor people frankly preferred Brother Giles's crib to the simple one in the Church. Quite a large number of people visited the crib in the orchard.
When the following Christmas came round, Father Prior had half a mind to suppress Brother Giles's crib altogether. It stultified his efforts towards educating the people. He yielded a rather grudging permission to the old brother to excavate the shabby painted images and make a crib for them in the orchard. Brother Giles set to work on his grotto in good time but he made a disquieting discovery. The image of the little Christ was not with the others, nor was it anywhere to be found. A search was instituted, and this failing, St Anthony was duly invoked. Brother Giles made his way to the church, and there vowed to St Anthony a number of candles but, alack! When the orchard crib had received its finishing touch, and the little hay-lined manger stood ready for its occupant, the babe of Bethlehem was still missing. Our Lady and St Joseph knelt before the empty crib and waited. The ox and the ass sat at their ease. Brother Giles fled to the church in desperation. He hastened past the crib in St Joseph's chapel with its chaste white figures and restrained art, to the corner recess where St Anthony stood with the Holy Visitor sporting on his open book. Brother Giles knelt before St Anthony and prayed.
Now it was one of the Prior's legitimate grievances against Brother Giles that he was in the habit of receiving suggestions from high quarters when he was praying. On this occasion Giles heard St Anthony tell him that, as he had been unable to find his little Christ, he was willing to give him his own instead: the little figure standing on his book. Brother Giles was inclined to demur. He realised to the full that his appropriating of St Anthony's little Christ would be fraught with direful consequences; but he also realised that unless he accepted St Anthony's, the crib must remain empty on Christmas Day. The thought of that hurt him with a real, intense pain. It was like St Anthony to give him a difficult task. It required a hand saw and a pair of pliers. Possessed of his treasure, Brother Giles bore the little image to the orchard in triumph, and laid it in the crib.
Curiously enough, nobody recognised St Anthony's Christ-child in Brother Giles's manger. More curiously still, no one appeared to have noticed the absence of the little figure of the Christ from St Anthony's statue in church. Poor old Giles had terrible spiritual qualms on the morrow when he approached the saint. Suppose he had been wrong and St Anthony were to signify his repudiation of the whole thing! He waited in trepidation to hear that the loss had been discovered, but, although many of the brothers had a devotion to St Anthony and constantly visited his shrine, there was no notification of an act of sacrilege.
Then the Prior himself happened to visit the corner where St Anthony's image stood and noticed something was wrong. The figure of the Christ-child had been removed! Who could have perpetrated so extraordinary an act of sacrilege? He made haste to the community room. There a peculiar thing happened. Brother after brother among those who had visited St Anthony declared that they had seen the little figure intact on the statue that very morning — one of them had been praying there five minutes before the Prior's visit. Not only had he seen the image but it appeared to be smiling. The Prior was perplexed. Brother Giles, hearing what had happened, sought the Father Prior and, falling on his knees, in the foolish way that the Prior so disliked, confessed to his misdemeanour. He had borrowed the figure to replace the lost one, and he had done it at the suggestion of St Anthony. It was exactly the kind of thing that the Prior felt bound to suppress. It was a grave matter, too, for the older members of the community seemed to have leagued together to shield Brother Giles, and to have told deliberate falsehoods to that end.
The Superior remembered that not one of the younger, more enlightened brothers had shared in the assertion that the figure had been in its place all the time. It must mean some sort of conspiracy and would need to be dealt with firmly. As for Brother Giles, he was simply an egregious lunatic. The Prior dictated to him his penance. He was at once to replace the stolen figure, and then he was to remove every vestige of the orchard crib before Compline. Brother Giles was agonised. He begged and implored his Superior to allow the crib to remain for Christmas Day; and then to give him any penance that he might choose to inflict. But the Prior was obdurate. He ordered Brother Giles to his task and went off to think over how to deal with those who had abetted him in his offence. The brothers were not in the least surprised to hear that St Anthony had found his Christ-child. It would be strange indeed if St Anthony couldn't find his own things! Neither were they surprised to hear that Brother Giles had been at the bottom of it all. As for Brother Giles, he went sadly forth to obey orders. Great was the anguish of his soul, for he was torn between conflicting fealties: his vow of obedience and his sense of the sacrilege — to insult Christ on the Feast of his Nativity. His conscience sought a way out of the spiritual dilemma. He proceeded to argue with himself. He was bound under obedience to take down the crib which he had set up, but there was no moral objection to his re-erecting it again. The taking down was merely an act of penance. That faithfully accomplished, he would be morally free to rebuild it in all its glory, and surely St Anthony would find him the original missing little Christ to fill the manger.
He toiled on in the cold and darkness with benumbed fingers, and a sharp physical pain at his heartstrings. Brother Giles was old and infirm but he worked on all night despite the cold. "Little Jesus, lovable and beautiful," he repeated, "make my heart Thy cradle." His mother had chanted it to him in his childhood, which tonight seemed very near and real. So the crib grew up for a second time against the orchard wall.
On Christmas Day, Father Prior preached at the High Mass. It was an impressive function, to which a number of outside visitors came.
The Prior offered a remarkable sermon that ought to have been addressed to one of the mixed congregations in the fashionable city churches. Great, therefore, was his gratification when, after Mass, he was approached by a notable astronomer said to be well disposed towards the Church, though still outside the fold. The astronomer proved to be a charming person, but he had nothing to say about the sermon; what he wanted was to be allowed to see the crib, of which he had heard from a friend of his, a recent convert to the Catholic Church. The Prior was pleased and flattered.
It was eminently satisfactory that his new crib should receive this tribute from a high quarter.
He made haste to conduct the visitor to the Chapel of St Joseph, where the Crib stood in all its austere beauty. The stranger stood surveying it for a few moments. Then he said, "But I don't think this can be what my friend meant. His crib was out of doors and quite simple." "Oh, you mean Brother Giles's crib." The Prior went on to explain that he had come too late to inspect that rather childish object of devotion. The visitor was disappointed. The Prior suggested that there might have been something in the atmosphere of the orchard that had made the impression on his friend. Many holy men had walked there in the old
days. He led him out into the orchard.
Only the little manger stood empty — pathetically empty. The astronomer uncovered his head. He knelt down on the snow-sprinkled plank and fixed his eyes on the empty crib. He knelt there quite a long time. The Prior supposed he was thinking, as he was simply gazing at space — an empty crib is not an absorbing thing to contemplate, although it may require explaining. At length the astronomer rose to his feet.
"I think," he said, "that you told me that you no longer want those old figures in the Crib. If so, may I offer you your price for the image of the Child? It's the most exquisite thing I've ever seen."
The Father Prior gaped at him. "But the Crib was empty," he said. "There was no image of the Child there."
At that moment, the Prior caught sight of the hem of a brown habit in the corner outside the grotto against the wall. There on a bench sat Brother Giles fast asleep. The whole truth flashed across the Prior's mind. The poor old boy had worked all night to rebuild his crib! And it was still empty. The pathos of the thing overtook him. Poor old Brother Giles! Sly old sinner!
"You are quite right," the astronomer said. "There is nothing there — now." Then he too caught sight of Brother Giles, sitting with his head sunk on his chin and his hands lying, palm upward, in his lap "Is that the Brother who built the crib?" He took out his purse and poured its contents — some 20 sovereigns — into the hand of the sleeping brother. "You could not sell me your image," he remarked, "but I will give the Brother its price twice over for the vision."
The Prior made no reply. He stood with the whole thing clear before him. The vision which had been plain to those simple old brothers in church, in St Anthony's corner, which his eyes had been unable to see, was now being granted to this outsider.
The astronomer knelt before the empty manger and made another offering. Not this time the gold, but the offering of the shepherds of Israel — faith.
Then they went to wake Brother Giles; but the gold had fallen from the rigid palm of the little brother who had wedded the Lady Poverty many years before. St Anthony had found him his Christ.
