She stood in the doorway, posing, while he gaped. She was so tall and her hands, at her sides, the backs up and the fingers arched, moved like lilies on the bosom of a stream. She was fantastic in a robe of deep crimson adorned with golden stars and crescents, swastikas and tau crosses; her feet were in silver sandals, and round her hair was a tiara of silver moons set with steel points that flickered in the candlelight. A mist of incense floated about her, seemed to rise from her, and as she slowly raised her arms he felt in schoolboyish awe that she was veritably a priestess.
Her voice was under the spell of the sleepwalker once more as she sighed “Come! It is the chapel.”
She marched to a door part-hidden by the couch, and led him into a room—
Now he was no longer part amorous, part inquisitive, but all uneasy.
What hanky-panky of construction had been performed he never knew; perhaps it was merely that the floor above this small room had been removed so that it stretched up two stories; but in any case there it was—a shrine bright as bedlam at the bottom but seeming to rise through darkness to the sky. The walls were hung with black velvet; there were no chairs; and the whole room focused on a wide altar. It was an altar of grotesque humor or of madness, draped with Chinese fabrics, crimson, apricot, emerald, gold. There were two stages of pink marble. Above the altar hung an immense crucifix with the Christ bleeding at nail-wounds and pierced side; and on the upper stage were plaster busts of the Virgin, St. Theresa, St. Catherine, a garish Sacred Heart, a dolorous simulacrum of the dying St. Stephen. But crowded on the lower stage was a crazy rout of what Elmer called “heathen idols”: ape-headed gods, crocodile-headed gods, a god with three heads and a god with six arms, a jade-and-ivory Buddha, an alabaster naked Venus, and in the center of them all a beautiful, hideous, intimidating and alluring statuette of a silver goddess with a triple crown and a face as thin and long and passionate as that of Sharon Falconer. Before the altar was a long velvet cushion, very thick and soft. Here Sharon suddenly knelt, waving him to his knees, as she cried:
“It is the hour! Blessed Virgin, Mother Hera, Mother Frigga, Mother Ishtar, Mother Isis, dread Mother Astarte of the weaving arms, it is thy priestess, it is she who after the blind centuries and the groping years shall make it known to the world that ye are one, and that in me are ye all revealed, and that in this revelation shall come peace and wisdom universal, the secret of the spheres and the pit of understanding. Ye who have leaned over me and on my lips pressed your immortal fingers, take this my brother to your bosoms, open his eyes, release his pinioned spirit, make him as the gods, that with me he may carry the revelation for which a thousand thousand grievous years the world has panted.
“O rosy cross and mystic tower of ivory—
“Hear my prayer.
“O sublime April crescent—
“Hear my prayer.
“O sword of undaunted steel most excellent—
“Hear thou my prayer.
“O serpent with unfathomable eyes—
“Hear my prayer.
“Ye veiled ones and ye bright ones—from caves forgotten, the peaks of the future, the clanging today—join in me, lift up, receive him, dread, nameless ones; yea, lift us then, mystery on mystery, sphere above sphere, dominion on dominion, to the very throne!”
She picked up a Bible which lay by her on the long velvet cushion at the foot of the altar, she crammed it into his hands, and cried, “Read—read—quickly!”
It was open at the Song of Solomon, and bewildered he chanted:
“How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter! The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy two breasts are like two young roes. Thy neck is as a tower of ivory. The hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries. How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!”
She interrupted him, her voice high and a little shrill: “O mystical rose, O lily most admirable, O wondrous union; O St. Anna, Mother Immaculate, Demeter, Mother Beneficent, Lakshmi, Mother Most Shining; behold, I am his and he is yours and ye are mine!”
As he read on, his voice rose like a triumphant priest’s:
“I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof—”
That verse he never finished, for she swayed sideways as she knelt before the altar, and sank into his arms, her lips parted.
IV
They sat on the hilltop, looking down on noon in the valley, sleepily talking till he roused with: “Why won’t you marry me?”
“No. Not for years, anyway. I’m too old—thirty-two to your—what is it, twenty-eight or -nine? And I must be free for the service of Our Lord. … You do know I mean that? I am really consecrated, no matter what I may seem to do!”
“Sweet, of course I do! Oh, yes.”
“But not marry. It’s good at times to be just human, but mostly I have to live like a saint. … Besides, I do think men converts come in better if they know I’m not married.”
“Damn it, listen! Do you love me a little?”
“Yes. A little! Oh, I’m as fond of you as I can be of anyone except Katie Jonas. Dear child!”
She dropped her head on his shoulder, casually now, in the bee-thrumming orchard aisle, and his arm tightened.
That evening they sang gospel hymns together, to the edification of the Old Family Servants,
