“You are happy, then!” F. Chevreuse said to Mr. Schöninger the next evening when they were talking together.
His companion repeated the word with a doubting inflection. “I have always associated the idea of happiness with excitement,” he said; “and I am too calm for that. I should say that I am deeply satisfied.”
Mr. Schöninger had been rehearsing in the church the music for the next day, and F. Chevreuse had sat in the sanctuary listening, marking with what will and effect the leader accomplished his work. He showed small regard, indeed, for the vanity or the personal dignity of the singers he was training, but the success was admirable. If the men and women around him had been organ-pipes or keys, he could scarcely have treated them with less ceremony. When the rehearsal was over, he dismissed them without a word, except the command to be promptly in their places the next morning. Knowing the touchiness of singers in general, and the peculiar touchiness of some of his own choir, the priest fully expected to see some manifestation of resentment among them; but they seemed merely surprised and a little awe-struck, and, after a momentary hesitation, withdrew in silence, leaving the organist alone in the loft, with the soft gloaming painting the air about him, as he closed the instrument with tender care, and drew the curtain about it.
While waiting for him to come down, the priest perceived for the first time a lady dressed in deep mourning, who knelt near the door, and who quietly followed the singers from the church. Miss Pembroke had the habit of visiting the Blessed Sacrament at this hour; and she was, moreover, making a Novena, which she had begun the night before, with a special intention. In that Novena her dear Sisters at the convent had joined, only Sister Cecilia knowing what the intention was.
Mr. Schöninger went into the house with F. Chevreuse, and stood with him at an open window looking out in that exquisite hour when day and night meet in mid-air, the sunset not yet relinquishing all its rose and gold, the night drawing only her tenderest film of purple across the sky, and crushing back [pg 672] her trembling stars like glimmering tears crushed between dark-fringed eyelids.
The two men looked out, both unconsciously pleased because the evening was beautiful and spring in its freshness, and consciously thinking of other things.
“They are all taking their places again,” Mr. Schöninger said, after looking upward a moment in silence. “My patriarchs and prophets! I hated to see them discrowned, and growing dim, and fading away into myths. Now they burn out again with a greater splendor than ever. The church of the fulfilment has never shown such men as my prophetic church. The glory of the later ritual is theirs. When the church which sees would express her emotion, she borrows the song of the men who foresaw. They were a grand race. I would like to build a church, and dedicate it to King David, and have a stone statue of him playing on his harp over against the altar.”
F. Chevreuse smiled, but said nothing. He was watching with intense interest the development of this new Christian, who took his religion as he might have taken a crown. Mr. Schöninger had an odd way of performing what in any one else would have been acts of humility with a proud unconsciousness, or an unconscious pride that was a little puzzling. Of what is commonly called piety he showed not a sign; yet he did without hesitation or apparent effort what ordinary piety shrinks from. One might say that he possessed a sublime common sense, which, perceiving the relative importance of God and man, worshipped God as a matter of course, taking no thought whether man were pleased or not. Certainly, had any religious persecution threatened him, he would have taken it as a piece of astonishing impertinence.
F. Chevreuse had only just checked in himself an intention to compliment the convert on what he took to be the bravery of his profession of faith the evening before, finding that Mr. Schöninger had been as disregardful of the crowd who had listened to him as if they had been wooden posts; and he refrained also from referring to the cool “Oh! come to think of it, I do not eat meat to-day,” with which he had that day, at the hotel table, sent his plate away in the face of a score of staring people, who, however, did not venture to smile.
If any one had exhorted him not to be ashamed of God, he would probably have asked simply, Do you think I am a fool?