“I think I choose St. Friend for my guide, because he begins and ends with prayer. I do not stay away from motion pictures, as he commands, nor from the Yellow Dance Halls, as he and my father both command. But I distrust these places, because of the warnings of these good men. I will eat this bread, you and I will eat it together, though I know it is railed at in the Yellow Dance Halls, and I know the keen things that are said there against such superstitions. We will continue to eat together the Amaranth-Apples that are tabooed there. We will read together the proverbs and songs and prayers of St. Scribe and, while our feet may be in the Yellow Halls, our souls will be making the pilgrimage of the one hundred religions. We will be thinking together how the whole human race is the body of Christ, soon to be raised from the dead.”
And so this evening Avanel invites me to her own select table in the inn at the top of one of the great northwest gates, the inner gate, that overlooks the former village of Ashland, Cass County, and is one of the chief glories of the Inner Wall. It is the Musicians’ Building and from here oftener than anywhere else on this wall, sound the special evening hymns and organ solos and chimes, over this whole segment of the city and over the forest parks to the north, between the walls. Pilgrims pass through the gate beneath us. They have visited, according to the ritual, Lincoln’s monument, the First Shrine of St. Scribe—Hunter Kelly, and they are hurrying along his great highway leading northwest through the Gate of the Outer Wall, that overlooks the former village of Virginia in old Cass County.
Our refractory is called:—The Pilgrim’s First Inn. It is on the cafeteria principle but is a most spacious place, being the whole floor of the tower, with tremendous sheets of glass for windows, so that an aviator, circling it, can see straight through it from every angle, and all the colored and decorative searchlights of this happy June evening sweep through it as the twilight comes on, lights for the most part of the delicate tints of the towers:—more like rapid clouds, left over from the sunset, than sharp, searching, swords.
So Avanel and I find our table, in proper chatting distance from several others, some of whom have also brought their brown loaf. And we carry from the counter a few things like coffee and butter and Amaranth-Apples and we banquet. She speaks more lovingly of her father’s many moods. She divides the apples, uttering at the same time scraps of his philosophy.
At last we take the bread of St. Friend. It is our communion service, High Mass of comradeship.
Avanel quotes from the Gospel of Luke,—from Luke’s deathless story of the first communion.
There is a ringing of bells all over the city, silvery and sweet, and in every tower of the walls:—the ringing of the star chimes. It is a clear night. The sweeping colored lights are gone. We go to the great expanse of windows and look up.
Avanel says:—“The trouble with this breaking of bread is that it is a pledge to break our bodies. I do not want to break mine for a long time, if ever.”
“Yet,” I say, “You ride your pale war horse.” Avanel, the dancer, replies:—“Let us hope that the war will never come. Let us hope, before the time war is due, the body of Christ, the whole human race, will be raised from the dead.”