Читать книгу The Altar of the Dead - Генри Джеймс, Henry Foss James - Страница 3

The next day, in the afternoon, in the great grey suburb, he knew his long walk had tired him.  In the dreadful cemetery alone he had been on his feet an hour.  Instinctively, coming back, they had taken him a devious course, and it was a desert in which no circling cabman hovered over possible prey.  He paused on a corner and measured the dreariness; then he made out through the gathered dusk that he was in one of those tracts of London which are less gloomy by night than by day, because, in the former case of the civil gift of light.  By day there was nothing, but by night there were lamps, and George Stransom was in a mood that made lamps good in themselves.  It wasn’t that they could show him anything, it was only that they could burn clear.  To his surprise, however, after a while, they did show him something: the arch of a high doorway approached by a low terrace of steps, in the depth of which—it formed a dim vestibule—the raising of a curtain at the moment he passed gave him a glimpse of an avenue of gloom with a glow of tapers at the end.  He stopped and looked up, recognising the place as a church.  The thought quickly came to him that since he was tired he might rest there; so that after a moment he had in turn pushed up the leathern curtain and gone in.  It was a temple of the old persuasion, and there had evidently been a function—perhaps a service for the dead; the high altar was still a blaze of candles.  This was an exhibition he always liked, and he dropped into a seat with relief.  More than it had ever yet come home to him it struck him as good there should be churches.

This one was almost empty and the other altars were dim; a verger shuffled about, an old woman coughed, but it seemed to Stransom there was hospitality in the thick sweet air.  Was it only the savour of the incense or was it something of larger intention?  He had at any rate quitted the great grey suburb and come nearer to the warm centre.  He presently ceased to feel intrusive, gaining at last even a sense of community with the only worshipper in his neighbourhood, the sombre presence of a woman, in mourning unrelieved, whose back was all he could see of her and who had sunk deep into prayer at no great distance from him.  He wished he could sink, like her, to the very bottom, be as motionless, as rapt in prostration.  After a few moments he shifted his seat; it was almost indelicate to be so aware of her.  But Stransom subsequently quite lost himself, floating away on the sea of light.  If occasions like this had been more frequent in his life he would have had more present the great original type, set up in a myriad temples, of the unapproachable shrine he had erected in his mind.  That shrine had begun in vague likeness to church pomps, but the echo had ended by growing more distinct than the sound.  The sound now rang out, the type blazed at him with all its fires and with a mystery of radiance in which endless meanings could glow.  The thing became as he sat there his appropriate altar and each starry candle an appropriate vow.  He numbered them, named them, grouped them—it was the silent roll-call of his Dead.  They made together a brightness vast and intense, a brightness in which the mere chapel of his thoughts grew so dim that as it faded away he asked himself if he shouldn’t find his real comfort in some material act, some outward worship.

This idea took possession of him while, at a distance, the black-robed lady continued prostrate; he was quietly thrilled with his conception, which at last brought him to his feet in the sudden excitement of a plan.  He wandered softly through the aisles, pausing in the different chapels, all save one applied to a special devotion.  It was in this clear recess, lampless and unapplied, that he stood longest—the length of time it took him fully to grasp the conception of gilding it with his bounty.  He should snatch it from no other rites and associate it with nothing profane; he would simply take it as it should be given up to him and make it a masterpiece of splendour and a mountain of fire.  Tended sacredly all the year, with the sanctifying church round it, it would always be ready for his offices.  There would be difficulties, but from the first they presented themselves only as difficulties surmounted.  Even for a person so little affiliated the thing would be a matter of arrangement.  He saw it all in advance, and how bright in especial the place would become to him in the intermissions of toil and the dusk of afternoons; how rich in assurance at all times, but especially in the indifferent world.  Before withdrawing he drew nearer again to the spot where he had first sat down, and in the movement he met the lady whom he had seen praying and who was now on her way to the door.  She passed him quickly, and he had only a glimpse of her pale face and her unconscious, almost sightless eyes.  For that instant she looked faded and handsome.

This was the origin of the rites more public, yet certainly esoteric, that he at last found himself able to establish.  It took a long time, it took a year, and both the process and the result would have been—for any who knew—a vivid picture of his good faith.  No one did know, in fact—no one but the bland ecclesiastics whose acquaintance he had promptly sought, whose objections he had softly overridden, whose curiosity and sympathy he had artfully charmed, whose assent to his eccentric munificence he had eventually won, and who had asked for concessions in exchange for indulgences.  Stransom had of course at an early stage of his enquiry been referred to the Bishop, and the Bishop had been delightfully human, the Bishop had been almost amused.  Success was within sight, at any rate from the moment the attitude of those whom it concerned became liberal in response to liberality.  The altar and the sacred shell that half encircled it, consecrated to an ostensible and customary worship, were to be splendidly maintained; all that Stransom reserved to himself was the number of his lights and the free enjoyment of his intention.  When the intention had taken complete effect the enjoyment became even greater than he had ventured to hope.  He liked to think of this effect when far from it, liked to convince himself of it yet again when near.  He was not often indeed so near as that a visit to it hadn’t perforce something of the patience of a pilgrimage; but the time he gave to his devotion came to seem to him more a contribution to his other interests than a betrayal of them.  Even a loaded life might be easier when one had added a new necessity to it.