Читать книгу Visionaries - James Huneker - Страница 9

"And the Seven Deadly Sins, beloved brethren, are: Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth. To these our wise Mother, the Church, opposes the contrary virtues: Humility, Chastity, Meekness, Temperance, Brotherly Love, Diligence." The voice of the preacher was clear and well modulated. It penetrated to the remotest corner of the church. Baldur, sitting near the pulpit, with its elaborate traceries of marble, idly wondered why the sins were, with few exceptions, words of one syllable, while those of the virtues were all longer. Perhaps because it was easier to sin than to repent! The voice of the speaker deepened as he continued:—

"Now the Seven Deadly Arts are: Music, Literature, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Dancing, Acting. The mercy of God has luckily purified these once pagan inventions, and transformed them into saving instruments of grace. Yet it behooves us to examine with the utmost diligence the possible sources of evil latent in each and every one of those arts. Then we shall consider some of the special forms of sin that may develop from them. St. Chrysostom warned the faithful against the danger of the Eighth Deadly Art—Perfume. … "

His phrases, which began to fall into the rhythmic drone of a Sunday sermon, lulled Baldur to dreaming. Perfume—that delicious vocable! And the contrast with what his own nostrils reported to his consciousness made him slightly shiver. It was on a Friday night in Lent that, weary in flesh and spirit, his conscience out of tune, he had entered the church and taken the first vacant seat. Without, the air was sluggish; after leaving his club the idea of theatres or calls had set his teeth on edge. He longed to be alone, to weigh in the silence of his heart the utter futility of life. Religion had never been a part of his training as the only son of a millionnaire, and if he preferred the Roman Catholic ritual above all others, it was because the appeal was to his æsthetic sense; a Turkish mosque, he assured his friends, produced the same soothing impression—gauze veils gently waving and slowly obscuring the dulling realities of everyday existence. This morbidezza of the spirit the Mahometans call Kef; the Christians, pious ecstasy.

But now he could not plunge himself, despite the faint odour of incense lingering in the atmosphere, into the deepest pit of his personality. At first he ascribed his restlessness to the sultry weather, then to his abuse of tea and cigarettes—perhaps it was the sharp odour of the average congregation, that collective odour of humanity encountered in church, theatre, or court-rooms. The smell of poverty was mingled with the heavy scents of fashionable women, who, in the minority, made their presence felt by their showy gowns, rustling movements, and attitudes of superior boredom. In a vast building like this extremes touch with eagerness on the part of the poor, to whom these furtive views of the rich and indolent brought with them a bitter consolation.

Baldur remarked these things as he leaned back in his hard seat and barely listened to the sermon, which poured forth as though the tap would never be turned off again. And then a delicate note of iris, most episcopal of perfumes, emerged from the mass of odours—musk, garlic, damp shoes, alcohol, shabby clothing, rubber, pomade, cologne, rice-powder, tobacco, patchouli, sachet, and a hundred other tintings of the earthly symphony. The finely specialized olfactory sense of the young man told him that it was either a bishop or a beautiful woman who imparted to the air the subtle, penetrating aroma of iris. But it was neither ecclesiastic nor maid. At his side was a short, rather thick-set woman of vague age; she might have been twenty-five or forty. Her hair was cut in masculine fashion, her attire unattractive. As clearly as he could distinguish her features he saw that she was not good-looking. A stern mask it was, though not hardened. He would not have looked at such an ordinary physiognomy twice if the iris had not signalled his peculiar sense. There was no doubt that to her it was due. Susceptible as he was to odours, Baldur was not a ladies' man. He went into society because it was his world; and he attended in a perfunctory manner to the enormous estate left him by his father, bound up in a single trust company. But his thoughts were always three thousand miles away, in that delectable city of cities, Paris. For Paris he suffered a painful nostalgia. There he met his true brethren, while in New York he felt an alien. He was one. The city, with its high, narrow streets—granite tunnels; its rude reverberations; its colourless, toiling barbarians, with their undistinguished physiognomies, their uncouth indifference to art—he did not deny that he loathed this nation, vibrating only in the presence of money, sports, grimy ward politics, while exhibiting a depressing snobbery to things British. There was no nuance in its life or its literature, he asserted. France was his patrie psychique; he would return there some day and forever. …

The iris crept under his nostrils, and again he regarded the woman. This time she faced him, and he no longer wondered, for he saw her eyes. With such eyes only a great soul could be imprisoned in her brain. They were smoke-gray, with long, dark lashes, and they did not seem to focus perfectly—at least there was enough deflection to make their expression odd, withal interesting, like the slow droop of Eleonora Duse's magic eye. Though her features were rigid, the woman's glance spoke to Baldur, spoke eloquently. Her eyes were—or was it the iris?—symbols of a soul-state, of a rare emotion, not of sex, nor yet sexless. The pupils seemed powdered with a strange iridescence. He became more troubled than before. What did the curious creature want of him! She was neither coquette nor cocotte, flirtation was not hinted by her intense expression. He resumed his former position, but her eyes made his shoulders burn, as if they had sufficient power to bore through them. He no longer paid any attention to his surroundings. The sermon was like the sound of far-away falling waters, the worshippers were so many black marks. Of two things was he aware—the odour of iris and her eyes.

He knew that he was in an overwrought mood. For some weeks this mood had been descending upon his spirit, like a pall. He had avoided music, pictures, the opera—which he never regarded as an art; even his favourite poets he could not read. Nor did he degustate, as was his daily wont, the supreme prose of the French masters. The pleasures of robust stomachs, gourmandizing and drinking, were denied him by nature. He could not sip a glass of wine, and for meat he entertained distaste. His physique proved him to be of the neurotic temperament—he was very tall, very slim, of an exceeding elegance, in dress a finical dandy; while his trim pointed blue-black beard and dark, foreign eyes were the cause of his being mistaken often for a Frenchman or a Spaniard—which illusion was not dissipated when he chose to speak their several tongues.

Involuntarily, and to the ire of his neighbours, he arose and indolently made his way down the side aisle. When he reached the baize swinging doors, he saw the woman approaching him. As if she had been an acquaintance of years, she saluted him carelessly, and, accompanied by the scandalized looks of many in the congregation, the pair left the church, though not before the preacher had sonorously quoted from the Psalm, Domine ne in Furore, "For my loins are filled with illusions; and there is no health in my flesh."