II
As the five-minutes bell began, sounding like a continuous wind-note inthe great vaults overhead, solemn and persistent, Mabel drew a longbreath and leaned back in her seat from the rigid position in which forthe last half-hour she had been staring out at the wonderful sight. Sheseemed to herself to have assimilated it at last, to be herself oncemore, to have drunk her fill of the triumph and the beauty. She was asone who looks upon a summer sea on the morning after a storm. And nowthe climax was at hand.
From end to end and side to side the interior of the Abbey presented agreat broken mosaic of human faces; living slopes, walls, sections andcurves. The south transept directly opposite to her, from pavement torose window, was one sheet of heads; the floor was paved with them, cutin two by the scarlet of the gangway leading from the chapel of St.Faith--on the right, the choir beyond the open space before thesanctuary was a mass of white figures, scarved and surpliced; the highorgan gallery, beneath which the screen had been removed, was crowdedwith them, and, far down beneath, the dim nave stretched the sameendless pale living pavement to the shadow beneath the west window.Between every group of columns behind the choir-stalls, before her, toright, left, and behind, were platforms contrived in the masonry; andthe exquisite roof, fan-tracery and soaring capital, alone gave the eyean escape from humanity. The whole vast space was full, it seemed, ofdelicate sunlight that streamed in from the artificial light set outsideeach window, and poured the ruby and the purple and the blue from theold glass in long shafts of colour across the dusty air, and in brokenpatches on the faces and dresses behind. The murmur of ten thousandvoices filled the place, supplying, it seemed, a solemn accompaniment tothat melodious note that now pulsed above it. And finally, moresignificant than all, was the empty carpeted sanctuary at her feet, theenormous altar with its flight of steps, the gorgeous curtain and thegreat untenanted sedilia.
* * * * *
Mabel needed some such reassurance, for last night, until the coming ofOliver, had passed for her as a kind of appalling waking dream. From thefirst shock of what she had seen outside the church, through those hoursof waiting, with the knowledge that this was the way in which the Spiritof Peace asserted its superiority, up to that last moment when, in herhusband's arms, she had learned of the Fall of Rome, it had appeared toher as if her new world had suddenly corrupted about her. It wasincredible, she told herself, that this ravening monster, dripping bloodfrom claws and teeth, that had arisen roaring in the night, could be theHumanity that had become her God. She had thought revenge and crueltyand slaughter to be the brood of Christian superstition, dead and buriedunder the new-born angel of light, and now it seemed that the monstersyet stirred and lived. All the evening she had sat, walked, lain abouther quiet house with the horror heavy about her, flinging open a windownow and again in the icy air to listen with clenched hands to the criesand the roarings of the mob that raged in the streets beneath, theclanks, the yells and the hoots of the motor-trains that tore up fromthe country to swell the frenzy of the city--to watch the red glow offire, the volumes of smoke that heaved up from the burning chapels andconvents.
She had questioned, doubted, resisted her doubts, flung out frantic actsof faith, attempted to renew the confidence that she attained in hermeditation, told herself that traditions died slowly; she had knelt,crying out to the spirit of peace that lay, as she knew so well, at theheart of man, though overwhelmed for the moment by evil passion. A lineor two ran in her head from one of the old Victorian poets:
You doubt If any one Could think or bid it? How could it come about?...Who did it? Not men! Not here! Oh! not beneath the sun.... The torchthat smouldered till the cup o'er-ran The wrath of God which is thewrath of Man!
She had even contemplated death, as she had told her husband--the takingof her own life, in a great despair with the world. Seriously she hadthought of it; it was an escape perfectly in accord with her morality.The useless and agonising were put out of the world by common consent;the Euthanasia houses witnessed to it. Then why not she?... For shecould not bear it!... Then Oliver had come, she had fought her way backto sanity and confidence; and the phantom had gone again.
How sensible and quiet he had been, she was beginning to tell herselfnow, as the quiet influence of this huge throng in this glorious placeof worship possessed her once more--how reasonable in his explanationthat man was even now only convalescent and therefore liable to relapse.She had told herself that again and again during the night, but it hadbeen different when he had said so. His personality had once moreprevailed; and the name of Felsenburgh had finished the work.
"If He were but here!" she sighed. But she knew He was far away.
* * * * *
It was not until a quarter to eleven that she understood that the crowdsoutside were clamouring for Him too, and that knowledge reassured heryet further. They knew, then, these wild tigers, where their redemptionlay; they understood what was their ideal, even if they had not attainedto it. Ah! if He were but here, there would be no more question: thesullen waves would sink beneath His call of peace, the hazy clouds lift,the rumble die to silence. But He was away--away on some strangebusiness. Well; He knew His work. He would surely come soon again to Hischildren who needed Him so terribly.
* * * * *
She had the good fortune to be alone in a crowd. Her neighbour, agrizzled old man with his daughters beyond, was her only neighbour, anda stranger. At her left rose up the red-covered barricade over which shecould see the sanctuary and the curtain; and her seat in the tribune,raised some eight feet above the floor, removed her from any possibilityof conversation. She was thankful for that: she did not want to talk;she wanted only to control her faculties in silence, to reassert herfaith, to look out over this enormous throng gathered to pay homage tothe great Spirit whom they had betrayed, to renew her own courage andfaithfulness. She wondered what the preacher would say, whether therewould be any note of penitence. Maternity was his subject--that benignaspect of universal life--tenderness, love, quiet, receptive, protectivepassion, the spirit that soothes rather than inspires, that busiesitself with peaceful tasks, that kindles the lights and fires of home,that gives sleep, food and welcome....
The bell stopped, and in the instant before the music began she heard,clear above the murmur within, the roar of the crowds outside, who stilldemanded their God. Then, with a crash, the huge organ awoke, pierced bythe cry of the trumpets and the maddening throb of drums. There was nodelicate prelude here, no slow stirring of life rising throughlabyrinths of mystery to the climax of sight--here rather was full-orbedday, the high noon of knowledge and power, the dayspring from on high,dawning in mid-heaven. Her heart quickened to meet it, and her revivingconfidence, still convalescent, stirred and smiled, as the tremendouschords blared overhead, telling of triumph full-armed. God was man,then, after all--a God who last night had faltered for an hour, but whorose again on this morning of a new year, scattering mists, dominantover his own passion, all-compelling and all-beloved. God was man, andFelsenburgh his Incarnation! Yes, she must believe that! She didbelieve that!
Then she saw how already the long procession was winding up beneath thescreen, and by imperceptible art the light grew yet more acutelybeautiful. They were coming, then, those ministers of a pure worship;grave men who knew in what they believed, and who, even if they did notat this moment thrill with feeling (for she knew that in this respecther husband for one did not), yet believed the principles of thisworship and recognised their need of expression for the majority ofmankind--coming slowly up in fours and pairs and units, led by robedvergers, rippling over the steps, and emerging again into the colouredsunlight in all their bravery of Masonic apron, badge and jewel. Surelyhere was reassurance enough.
* * * * *
The sanctuary now held a figure or two. Anxious-faced Mr. Francis, inhis robes of office, came gravely down the steps and stood awaiting theprocession, directing with almost imperceptible motions his satelliteswho hovered about the aisles ready to point this way and t
hat to theadvancing stream; and the western-most seats were already beginning tofill, when on a sudden she recognised that something had happened.
Just now the roaring of the mob outside had provided a kind of underbassto the music within, imperceptible except to sub-consciousness, butclearly discernible in its absence; and this absence was now a fact.
At first she thought that the signal of beginning worship had hushedthem; and then, with an indescribable thrill, she remembered that in allher knowledge only one thing had ever availed to quiet a turbulentcrowd. Yet she was not sure; it might be an illusion. Even now the mobmight be roaring still, and she only deaf to it; but again with anecstasy that was very near to agony she perceived that the murmur ofvoices even within the building had ceased, and that some great wave ofemotion was stirring the sheets and slopes of faces before her as a windstirs wheat. A moment later, and she was on her feet, gripping the rail,with her heart like an over-driven engine beating pulses of blood,furious and insistent, through every vein; for with great rushing surgethat sounded like a sigh, heard even above the triumphant tumultoverhead, the whole enormous assemblage had risen to its feet.
Confusion seemed to break out in the orderly procession. She saw Mr.Francis run forward quickly, gesticulating like a conductor, and at hissignal the long line swayed forward, split, recoiled, and again slidswiftly forward, breaking as it did so into twenty streams that pouredalong the seats and filled them in a moment. Men ran and pushed, apronsflapped, hands beckoned, all without coherent words. There was aknocking of feet, the crash of an overturned chair, and then, as if agod had lifted his hand for quiet, the music ceased abruptly, sending awild echo that swooned and died in a moment; a great sigh filled itsplace, and, in the coloured sunshine that lay along the immense lengthof the gangway that ran open now from west to east, far down in thedistant nave, a single figure was seen advancing.
Lord of the World Page 40
