You know "the hidden and unutterable sweetness of the Mass."
For Anthony, kneeling there with Susanna, the sweetness of the Mass was strangely intensified. He did not look at her, he looked at the altar, or sometimes at his prayer-book; but the sense that she was beside him possessed every atom of his consciousness. Her kneeling figure, her white profile, her hair, her hat, her very frock,—he could see them, somehow, without looking; his eye preserved a permanent vision of them. Yet they did not distract his thoughts from the altar. He followed with devout attention the Act that was being consummated there; the emotion of her presence merged with and became part of the emotion of the Mass. They were offering the Holy Sacrifice side by side, they were offering it together, they were sharing the Sacred Mystery. It seemed to him that by this they were drawn close to each other, and placed in a new relation, a relation that was far beyond the mere acquaintanceship of yesterday, that in a very special and beautiful way was intimate. The priest crossed the sanctuary, and they stood together for the Gospel; the bell was rung, and together they bowed their heads for the Elevation. They knelt side by side in body, but in spirit was it not more than this? In spirit, for the time, were they not absolutely at one?—united, commingled, in the awe and the wonder, the worship and the love, of the Presence that had come, that was filling the dim and silent little chapel with a light eyes were not needed to see, with a music ears were not needed to hear, that had transformed the poor little altar into a painless Calvary, whence were diffused all peace, all grace, all benediction? They knelt side by side, adoring together, breathing together the air that was now in very deed the air of Heaven. And it seemed to Anthony as if the Presence smiled upon them, and sanctioned and sanctified the thing that was in his heart.
"Domine, non sum dignus," solemnly rose the voice of the priest,
"Domine, non sum dignus . . ."
It was the supreme moment.
They went forward, and side by side knelt at the rail of the sanctuary.
XII
Alas, the uncertain glory of an English June. That night the weather changed. Monday was grey and cold, the beginning of a cold grey week, a week of rain and wind, of low skies and scudding clouds; the sad-coloured sea flecked with angry white, the earth sodden; leaves, torn from their trees, scurrying down the pathways; and Adrian, of all persons, given over to peevishness and lamentations.
"Oh, I brazenly confess it—I 'm a fair-weather friend," he said, as he looked disconsolately forth from the window of his business-room, (a room, by the bye, whereof the chief article of furniture was a piano-à-queue). "Bring me sunshine and peaches, and I 'll be as sweet as bright Apollo's lute strung with his hair. But this sort of gashly, growsy, grim, sour, shuddery weather turns me into a broken-hearted vixen. I could sit down and cry. I could lie down and die. I could rise up and snap your head off. I am filled with verjuice and vitriol. Oh, me! Oh, my!"
He stamped backwards and forwards, in nervous exasperation. He went to the piano, and brought his hands down in a discordant clang upon the keys.
"Can't anybody silence those stupid birds?" he cried, moving back to the window, through which the merry piping of a robin was audible. "How inept, how spiteful, of them to go on singing, singing, in the face of such odious weather. Tell Wickersmith or someone to take a gun and an umbrella, and to go out and shoot them. And the wind—the strumpet wind," he cried. "All last night it gurgled and howled and hooted in my chimney like a drunken banshee, and nearly frightened me to death. And me a musician. And me the gentlest of God's creatures—who never did any harm, but killed the mice in father's barn. I ask you, as a man of the world, is it delicate, is it fair? Drip, drip, drip—swish, swish, swash,—ugh, the rain! If it could guess how I despise it!" He made a face and shook his fist at it. "Do you think the weather knows how disagreeable it is? We all know how disagreeable other people can be, but so few of us know how disagreeable we ourselves can be. Do you think the weather knows? Do you think it's behaving in this way purposely to vex me?"