Part 32 (1/2)
--MARCUS AURELIUS. (LONG.)
CHAPTER I
Two men pa.s.sed the Church of the Immaculate Conception, wheeled suddenly round, and came back.
”By Jove, Driscoll, you have been outside of civilization!” said one, who was fair and florid, with a general suggestion of potential apoplexy polished by the oil of indulgence. ”What! you haven't heard the Reverend Algarcife? Why, he rivals in popularity the Brockenhurst scandal, and his power is only equalled by that of--of Tammany.”
John Driscoll laughed cynically.
”Let's have the scandal, by all means,” he returned. ”Spare me the puling priests.”
”Bless my soul, man, don't tell me the Brockenhurst affair hasn't reached the Pacific slope! What a h.e.l.l of a place! Well, Darbey was named corespondent, you know. You remember Darbey, the fellow who owned that dandy racer, La Bella, and lost her to Owens at cards? But the papers are full of it. Next thing you'll tell me you don't see the _Sun_.”
”A fact. I don't read newspapers, I write them--or used to. But what about this priest? I knew an Algarcife in my green and ambitious youth, but he wasn't a priest; he was a pagan, and a deuced solemn one at that.”
They stood upon the gray stone steps, and the belated wors.h.i.+ppers trooped past them to vespers. A woman with a virginal calm face and a camellia in her hymnal brushed them lightly, leaving a trail of luxurious sweetness on the air; a portly vestryman, with inflated cheeks and short-sighted eyes, mounted the steps pantingly, his lean and flat-chested wife hanging upon his arm; a gray-browed gentlewoman, her eyes inscrutable with chast.i.ty unsurprised, held her black silk skirt primly as she ascended, carrying her prayer-book as if it were a bayonet.
In the street a carriage was standing, the driver yawning above his robes. From the quivering flanks of the horses a white steam rose like mist. Near the horses' hoofs a man born blind sat with a tray of matches upon his knee.
”Why, that's the jolliest part!” responded the first man, with a tolerant smile. ”This one was an atheist once--or something of the sort, but the old man--Father Speares, I mean--got hold of him, and a conversion followed. And, by Jove, he has driven all the women into a religious mania! I believe he could found a new faith to-morrow if he'd be content with female apostles.”
Driscoll shrugged his shoulders. ”Religion might be called the feminine element of modern society,” he observed. ”It owes its persistence to the attraction of s.e.x, and St. Paul was shrewd enough to foresee it. He knew when he forbade women to speak in public that he was insuring congregations of feminine posterity. Oh, it is s.e.x--s.e.x that moves the world!”
”And mars it.”
”The same thing. Listen!”
As the heavy doors swung back, the voices of the choir swelled out into the faint suns.h.i.+ne, the notes of a high soprano skimming bird-like over the deeper voices of the males and the profundo of the organ.
When next Driscoll spoke it was with sudden interest. ”I say, Ryder, if this is Algarcife, why on earth did he turn theologian? Any evidences of brain softening?”
”Hardly. It is a second Tractarian excitement, with Algarcife for the leader. The High-Church party owes him canonization, as I said to the bishop yesterday. He is the best advertising medium of the century.
After Father Speares died, he took things in hand, you know, and raised a thunder-cloud. The old man's mantle fell upon him, along with whatever worldly possessions he possessed. Then some physiologist named Clynn got him into a controversy, and it was like applying an electric-battery to the sluggish limbs of the Church.”
Driscoll gave a low whistle.
”Well, as I'm alive!” he said. ”What is it all for, anyway?”
”Let's go inside,” said Ryder, drawing his collar about his throat.
”Beastly chill for October. Wind's due east.”
For an instant they paused in the vestibule; then Ryder laid his hand upon the door; it swung open, and they entered the church.
At first the change of light dazzled Driscoll, and he raised his hand to his eyes; then, lowering it, he leaned against a pillar and looked over the heads of the congregation. A mellow obscurity flooded the nave, lightening in opalescent values where the stained-gla.s.s windows cast faint glints of green and gold. The atmosphere was so highly charged with color that it seemed to possess the tangible qualities of fine gauze, drawn in transparent tissue from the vaulted ceiling to the gray dusk of the aisles. A single oblique ray of suns.h.i.+ne, filtering through a western pane, crept slowly along the walls to the first station of the cross, where it lay warm and still. Through the heavy luminousness the voices of the choir swelled in triumphant acclamation:
”And His mercy is on them that fear Him: Throughout all generations.
He hath showed strength with His arm: He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat.”