So he ate his delicate toast, and drank his delicious coffee, and wished he had asked that queer man to have his flask filled at the drug store before he went to his old service, but consoled himself with numerous cigarettes, while he watched the face of the musician, and listened idly to the music.
It was plain that the young organist was also the choir leader, for her expressive face was turned toward the singers, and her lovely head kept time. Now and then a motion of the hand seemed to give a direction or warning. And the choir too sang with great sweetness and expression. They were well trained. But what a bore such a life must be to a girl. Still, if she had never known anything else—! Well, he would like to see her at closer range. He lit another cigarette and studied her profile as she slipped out of the organ bench and settled herself nearer the window. He could hear the man's voice reading now. Some of the words drew his idle attention:
“All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but
the Lord weigheth the spirits.”
Curious sentence that! It caught in his brain. It seemed rather true. From the Bible probably of course, though he was not very familiar with that volume, never having been obliged to go to Sunday School in his childhood days? But was it true? Were all a man's ways clean in his own eyes? Take, for instance, his own ways? He always did about as he pleased, and he had never asked himself whether his ways were clean or not. He hadn't particularly cared. He supposed some people would think they were not—but in his own eyes, well—was he clean? Take for instance this expedition of his? Running a race to get another man's wife,—an alleged friend's wife, too? It did seem rather despicable when one thought of it after the jag was off. But then one was not quite responsible for what one did with a jag on, and what the deuce did the Lord have to do with it anyway? How could the Lord weigh the spirit? That meant of course that he saw through all subterfuges. Well, what of it?
Another sentence caught his ear:
“When a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his
enemies to be at peace with him.”
How odd, the Lord,—if there was a Lord, he had never thought much about it—but how odd, if there was a Lord for Him to care about a man's ways. If he were Lord he wouldn't care, he'd only want them to keep out of his way. He would probably crush them like ants, if he were Lord. But the Lord—taking any notice of men's ways, and being pleased by them and looking out to protect him from enemies! It certainly was quaint—a quaint idea! He glanced again at the reverent face of the girl, the down drooped eyes, the lovely sensitive mouth. Quaint, that was the word for her, quaint and unusual. He certainly was going to enjoy meeting her.
“Ting-aling-ling-ling!” burst out the telephone bell on the desk. He frowned and dropped the curtain. Was that Opal? He hobbled to the desk painfully, half annoyed that she had called him from the contemplation of this novel scene, not so sure that he would bother to call up that garage yet. Let it go till he had sampled the girl.
He took down the receiver and Opal's voice greeted him, mockingly, tauntingly from his own world. The little ivy leaved church with its Saint Cecilia at the organ, and its strange weird message about a God that cared for man's ways, dropped away like a dream that was past.
When he hung up the receiver and turned back to his couch again the girl had closed the window. It annoyed him. He did not know how his giddy badinage had clashed in upon the last words of the sermon.