Chapter III

THE next day, in the afternoon, in the great grey suburb, he knew
his long walk had tired him. In the dreadful cemetery alone he had
been on his feet an hour. Instinctively, coming back, they had
taken him a devious course, and it was a desert in which no
circling cabman hovered over possible prey. He paused on a corner
and measured the dreariness; then he made out through the gathered
dusk that he was in one of those tracts of London which are less
gloomy by night than by day, because, in the former case of the
civil gift of light. By day there was nothing, but by night there
were lamps, and George Stransom was in a mood that made lamps good
in themselves. It wasn't that they could show him anything, it was
only that they could burn clear. To his surprise, however, after a
while, they did show him something: the arch of a high doorway
approached by a low terrace of steps, in the depth of which - it
formed a dim vestibule - the raising of a curtain at the moment he
passed gave him a glimpse of an avenue of gloom with a glow of
tapers at the end. He stopped and looked up, recognising the place
as a church. The thought quickly came to him that since he was
tired he might rest there; so that after a moment he had in turn
pushed up the leathern curtain and gone in. It was a temple of the
old persuasion, and there had evidently been a function - perhaps a
service for the dead; the high altar was still a blaze of candles.
This was an exhibition he always liked, and he dropped into a seat
with relief. More than it had ever yet come home to him it struck
him as good there should be churches.

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This one was almost empty and the other altars were dim; a verger
shuffled about, an old woman coughed, but it seemed to Stransom
there was hospitality in the thick sweet air. Was it only the
savour of the incense or was it something of larger intention? He
had at any rate quitted the great grey suburb and come nearer to
the warm centre. He presently ceased to feel intrusive, gaining at
last even a sense of community with the only worshipper in his
neighbourhood, the sombre presence of a woman, in mourning
unrelieved, whose back was all he could see of her and who had sunk
deep into prayer at no great distance from him. He wished he could
sink, like her, to the very bottom, be as motionless, as rapt in
prostration. After a few moments he shifted his seat; it was
almost indelicate to be so aware of her. But Stransom subsequently
quite lost himself, floating away on the sea of light. If
occasions like this had been more frequent in his life he would
have had more present the great original type, set up in a myriad
temples, of the unapproachable shrine he had erected in his mind.
That shrine had begun in vague likeness to church pomps, but the
echo had ended by growing more distinct than the sound. The sound
now rang out, the type blazed at him with all its fires and with a
mystery of radiance in which endless meanings could glow. The
thing became as he sat there his appropriate altar and each starry
candle an appropriate vow. He numbered them, named them, grouped
them - it was the silent roll-call of his Dead. They made together
a brightness vast and intense, a brightness in which the mere
chapel of his thoughts grew so dim that as it faded away he asked
himself if he shouldn't find his real comfort in some material act,
some outward worship.