Juxtaposition

THE STRANGE CASE OF Miss ANNIE SPRAGG--Louis Bromfield--Stokes ($2.50).

The Stories. A bedraggled little old maid utterly without human contact in life, Annie Spragg was linked in death with motley and many human lives:

Sister Annunziata, a d'Orobelli without beauty or dot, had long since been hidden in a convent where she devoted her life to the adoration of Saint Francis and the service of the poor. It was in laying out the ravishing body of poor Miss Annie Spragg that she beheld upon it the miracle of the Stigmata. The sadness of Annunziata's life was turned to joy at this sign from her patron saint.*

Father Baldessare, fat, devout and stupid priest, was another to witness the miracle, and urged the Church to saint Annie Spragg. His credulity was rebuked by a more sophisticated churchman, who explained brutally that at the moment the Church had less need for miracles than for money.

Father d'Astier was this intelligent pragmatist, who never would have bothered to explain but for his exasperation that the stupid dolt was his son (illegitimate of course). He himself, suave, charming, had devoted his career to the greater need of the Church, and converted to Catholicism the rich and the powerful.

Princess d'Orobelli (American heiress married to an impoverished title) was his beloved friend. But he had rebuffed her passionate love 30 years before, and she had wandered restlessly ever since from one lover to another.

Mrs. Weatherby, a portly widow with a sensuous passion for exotic religions, was flattered to receive them both one hot afternoon. Vain, she did not suspect that d'Astier came only to convert her wealth to the Church; and d'Orobelli to glean some gossip of Annie Spragg. Maundering, inaccurate, patronizing, Mrs. Weatherby said Annie had lived with her fanatic preacher brother at the edge of Winnebago Falls--her only companion a Hack goat, partner in her devilish Bacchanalian dances. That her father had been Cyrus Spragg, "the Prophet" in Illinois of a garish religion founded upon his own splendid sexual virility, Mrs. Weatherby preferred not to mention for reasons of her own.

Miss Fosdick, these 20 years companion to Mrs. Weatherby, knew the reasons. And she knew why Miss Annie Spragg got those "stigmata," and who her passionate lover. But Miss Fosdick was more interested in her own lack of lover, and blushed under the glance of another of Mrs. Weatherby's callers-in-re-Spragg.

Mr. Winnery, desiccated bachelor of 56, collected notes for a book on "Miracles and Other Natural Phenomena." The sight of buxom Miss Fosdick, for all her black austerity of dress, reminded him that he had never known passion.

Bessie Cudlip facilitated his courtship of Miss Fosdick by dying (on the same day as Miss Spragg), and leaving him her money. For she, a hearty wench from the "Pot and Pie," had picked up Mr. Winnery, Sr., in Brighton, honeymooned with him in Paris, that glorified Brighton, and lavished money since his death on church-sociables and Sunday School picnics.

The Significance. Slighter than the broken bridge at Lima is the thread upon which these, and still more, stories are strung. Seeming irrelevant, their juxtaposition reveals the curious and intricate interweaving of heterogeneous human lives. If a mystical corollary was intended, it is less important than the sheer fortuity which makes bromides say the world is such a small place after all.

The Author. Louis Bromfield is one of those who live in Paris the better to get perspective on the American scene, but his origins are all-American. Born (1896) in Ohio of Boston-Maryland stock, he went to public schools, and to the Cornell Agricultural School. During the War he served with the French Army, in numerous sectors from Switzerland to the North Sea. He then resumed newspaper jobs in Manhattan, wrote up current theatre, worked on a music magazine.

*Stigmata are marks on the human body corresponding to Christ's wounds at the Crucifixion. Francis of Assisi was the first saint upon whom these miraculous marks appeared.