IV
They walked without speaking except when Carl Miller acknowledged automatically the existence of passers-by. Rudolph’s uneven breathing alone ruffled the hot Sunday silence.
His father stopped decisively at the door of the church.
«I’ve decided you’d better go to confession again. Go in and tell Father Schwartz what you did and ask God’s pardon.»
«You lost your temper, too!» said Rudolph quickly.
Carl Miller took a step toward his son, who moved cautiously backward.
«All right, I’ll go.»
«Are you going to do what I say?» cried his father in a hoarse whisper.
«All right.»
Rudolph walked into the church, and for the second time in two days entered the confessional and knelt down. The slat went up almost at once.
«I accuse myself of missing my morning prayers.»
«Is that all?»
«That’s all.»
A maudlin exultation filled him. Not easily ever again would he be able to put an abstraction before the necessities of his ease and pride. An invisible line had been crossed, and he had become aware of his isolation—aware that it applied not only to those moments when he was Blatchford Sarnemington but that it applied to all his inner life. Hitherto such phenomena as «crazy» ambitions and petty shames and fears had been but private reservations, unacknowledged before the throne of his official soul. Now he realized unconsciously that his private reservations were himself—and all the rest a garnished front and a conventional flag. The pressure of his environment had driven him into the lonely secret road of adolescence.
He knelt in the pew beside his father. Mass began. Rudolph knelt up—when he was alone he slumped his posterior back against the seat—and tasted the consciousness of a sharp, subtle revenge. Beside him his father prayed that God would forgive Rudolph, and asked also that his own outbreak of temper would be pardoned. He glanced sidewise at this son, and was relieved to see that the strained, wild look had gone from his face and that he had ceased sobbing. The Grace of God, inherent in the Sacrament, would do the rest, and perhaps after Mass everything would be better. He was proud of Rudolph in his heart, and beginning to be truly as well as formally sorry for what he had done.
Usually, the passing of the collection box was a significant point for Rudolph in the services. If, as was often the case, he had no money to drop in he would be furiously ashamed and bow his head and pretend not to see the box, lest Jeanne Brady in the pew behind should take notice and suspect an acute family poverty. But to-day he glanced coldly into it as it skimmed under his eyes, noting with casual interest the large number of pennies it contained.
When the bell rang for communion, however, he quivered. There was no reason why God should not stop his heart. During the past twelve hours he had committed a series of mortal sins increasing in gravity, and he was now to crown them all with a blasphemous sacrilege.
«Domini, non sum dignus; ut interes sub tectum meum; sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea….»
There was a rustle in the pews, and the communicants worked their ways into the aisle with downcast eyes and joined hands. Those of larger piety pressed together their finger-tips to form steeples. Among these latter was Carl Miller. Rudolph followed him toward the altar-rail and knelt down, automatically taking up the napkin under his chin. The bell rang sharply, and the priest turned from the altar with the white Host held above the chalice:
«Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam meam in vitam æternam.»
A cold sweat broke out on Rudolph’s forehead as the communion began. Along the line Father Schwartz moved, and with gathering nausea Rudolph felt his heart-valves weakening at the will of God. It seemed to him that the church was darker and that a great quiet had fallen, broken only by the inarticulate mumble which announced the approach of the Creator of Heaven and Earth. He dropped his head down between his shoulders and waited for the blow.
Then he felt a sharp nudge in his side. His father was poking him to sit up, not to slump against the rail; the priest was only two places away.
«Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam meam in vitam æternam.»
Rudolph opened his mouth. He felt the sticky wax taste of the wafer on his tongue. He remained motionless for what seemed an interminable period of time, his head still raised, the wafer undissolved in his mouth. Then again he started at the pressure of his father’s elbow, and saw that the people were falling away from the altar like leaves and turning with blind downcast eyes to their pews, alone with God.
Rudolph was alone with himself, drenched with perspiration and deep in mortal sin. As he walked back to his pew the sharp taps of his cloven hoofs were loud upon the floor, and he knew that it was a dark poison he carried in his heart.
V
«Sagitta Volante in Dei»
The beautiful little boy with eyes like blue stones, and lashes that sprayed open from them like flower-petals had finished telling his sin to Father Schwartz—and the square of sunshine in which he sat had moved forward half an hour into the room. Rudolph had become less frightened now; once eased of the story a reaction had set in. He knew that as long as he was in the room with this priest God would not stop his heart, so he sighed and sat quietly, waiting for the priest to speak.
Father Schwartz’s cold watery eyes were fixed upon the carpet pattern on which the sun had brought out the swastikas and the flat bloomless vines and the pale echoes of flowers. The hall-clock ticked insistently toward sunset, and from the ugly room and from the afternoon outside the window arose a stiff monotony, shattered now and then by the reverberate clapping of a far-away hammer on the dry air. The priest’s nerves were strung thin and the beads of his rosary were crawling and squirming like snakes upon the green felt of his table top. He could not remember now what it was he should say.
Of all the things in this lost Swede town he was most aware of this little boy’s eyes—the beautiful eyes, with lashes that left them reluctantly and curved back as though to meet them once more.
For a moment longer the silence persisted while Rudolph waited, and the priest struggled to remember something that was slipping farther and farther away from him, and the clock ticked in the broken house. Then Father Schwartz stared hard at the little boy and remarked in a peculiar voice:
«When a lot of people get together in the best places things go glimmering.»
Rudolph started and looked quickly at Father Schwartz’s face.
«I said—» began the priest, and paused, listening. «Do you hear the hammer and the clock ticking and the bees? Well, that’s no good. The thing is to have a lot of people in the centre of the world, wherever that happens to be. Then»—his watery eyes widened knowingly—»things go glimmering.»
«Yes, Father,» agreed Rudolph, feeling a little frightened.
«What are you going to be when you grow up?»
«Well, I was going to be a baseball-player for a while,» answered Rudolph nervously, «but I don’t think that’s a very good ambition, so I think I’ll be an actor or a Navy officer.»
Again the priest stared at him.
«I see exactly what you mean,» he said, with a fierce air.
Rudolph had not meant anything in particular, and at the implication that he had, he became more uneasy.
«This man is crazy,» he thought, «and I’m scared of him. He wants me to help him out some way, and I don’t want to.»
«You look as if things went glimmering,» cried Father Schwartz wildly. «Did you ever go to a party?»
«Yes, Father.»
«And did you notice that everybody was properly dressed? That’s what I mean. Just as you went into the party there was a moment when everybody was properly dressed. Maybe two little girls were standing by the door and some boys were leaning over the banisters, and there were bowls around full of flowers.»
«I’ve been to a lot of parties,» said Rudolph, rather relieved that the conversation had taken this turn.
«Of course,» continued Father Schwartz triumphantly, «I knew you’d agree with me. But my theory is that when a whole lot of people get together in the best places things go glimmering all the time.»
Rudolph found himself thinking of Blatchford Sarnemington.
«Please listen to me!» commanded the priest impatiently. «Stop worrying about last Saturday. Apostasy implies an absolute damnation only on the supposition of a previous perfect faith. Does that fix it?»
Rudolph had not the faintest idea what Father Schwartz was talking about, but he nodded and the priest nodded back at him and returned to his mysterious preoccupation.
«Why,» he cried, «they have lights now as big as stars—do you realize that? I heard of one light they had in Paris or somewhere that was as big as a star. A lot
