CHAPTER VI. THE UNKNOWN GOD.
As the vicar entered the chapel, he stopped short, struck with astonishment at the singular appearance of the interior.
The sunlight streaming through the leaded diamond panes of the casements, instead of falling on the familiar pews, flagged nave, and solemn walls, shone with a startling effect on the heterogeneous contents of a museum and laboratory. Along one side of the building were ranged several glass cases containing collections of fossils, arctic and tropical shells, antique implements of flint, stone, and bronze, and geological specimens. The walls were decorated with savage curiosities—shields of skin, carved clubs and paddles, spears and arrows tipped with flint or fishbone, mats of grass, strings of wampum, and dresses of skins and feathers. On a couple of small shelves grinned two rows of hideous crania, gathered as ethnic types from all quarters of the barbarian world, and beside them lay a plaster cast of a famous paleolithic skull. On the various stands and tables in different parts of the room were retorts and crucibles, curious tubes, glasses and flasks, electric jars and batteries, balances, microscopes, prisms, strange instruments of brass and glass, and a bewildering litter of odds and ends, for which only a student of science could find a name or a use. At the further end of the room, under the coloured east window, stood an escritoire covered with a confused mass of paper, and beside it stood a small table piled with books.
As Mrs. Haldane and the vicar entered, the master of Foxglove Manor, who had been writing, rose, laid down his pipe, buttoned his old velvet shooting-jacket, and hastened forward to welcome his visitor.
Baptisto gravely set a couple of chairs, and, at a sign from his master, bowed profoundly, and retired to the further end of the apartment.
“Do you smoke, Mr. Santley?” Mr. Haldane asked, glancing at a box of new clay pipes.
“No, thank you; but I do not dislike the smell of tobacco. I find, however, that smoking disagrees with me—irritates instead of soothing, as professors of the weed tell me it should do.”
“Touches the solar plexus, eh? Then beware of it! The value of the solar system is often determined by the condition of the solar plexus.”