Late on the afternoon of the following day Michael walked through the gustiness of a swift-closing summer toward St. Bartholomew's, where it stood facing a stretch of sandy heather and twisted pine trees on the outskirts of Bournemouth. The sky was stained infrequently with the red of a lifeless sunset and, as Michael watched the desolation of summer's retreat, he listened sadly to the sibilant heather lisping against the flutes of the pines, while from time to time the wind drummed against the buttresses and boomed against the bulk of the church. Michael drew near the west door whose hinges and nails stood out unnaturally distinct in the last light of the sun. Abruptly on the blowy eve the church-bell began to ring, and from various roads Michael saw people approaching, their heads bent against the gale. At length he made up his mind to follow one of the groups through the churchyard and presently, while the gate rattled behind him in the wind, he reached the warm glooms within. As he took his seat and perceived the altar loaded with flowers, dazzling with lighted candles, he wondered why this should be so on a Monday night in August. The air was pungent with the smell of wax and the stale perfume of incense on stone. The congregation was scattered about in small groups and units, and the vaulted silence was continually broken by coughs and sighs and hollow footsteps. From the tower the bell rang in slow monotone, while the wind whistled and moaned and flapped and boomed as if, thought Michael, all the devils in hell were trying to break into the holy building. The windows were now scarcely luminous with the wan shadow of daylight and would indeed have been opaque as coal had the inside of the church been better lighted. But the few wavering gas-jets in the nave made all seem dark save where the chancel, empty and candle-lit, shone and sparkled in a radiancy. Something in Michael's attitude must have made a young man sitting behind lean over and ask if he wanted a Prayer Book. Michael turned quickly to see a lean and eager face.
"Yes, please. I left mine at home," he answered.
"Well, come and sit by me," said the young man.
Michael changed his place and the young man talked in a low whisper, while the bell rang its monotone upon the gusts which swept howling round the church.
"Solemn Evensong isn't until seven o'clock. It's our patronal festival, St. Bartholomew's Day—you know. We had a good Mass this morning. Every year we get more people. Do you live in Bournemouth?"
"No," whispered Michael. "I'm just here for the holidays."
"What a pity," said the stranger. "We do so want servers—you know—decent-looking servers. Our boys are so clumsy. It's not altogether their fault—the cassocks—you know—they're only in two sizes. They trip up. I'm the Ceremonarius, and I can tell you I have my work cut out. Of course I ought to have been helping to-night. But I wasn't sure I could get away from the Bank in time. I hope Wilson—that's our second thurifer—won't go wrong in the Magnificat. He usually does."
The bell stopped: there was a momentary hush for the battling wind to moan louder than ever: then the organ began to play and from the sacristy came the sound of a chanted Amen. Choristers appeared followed by two or three of the clergy, and when these had taken their places a second procession appeared, with boys in scarlet and lace and a tinkling censer and a priest in a robe of blood-red velvet patterned with dull gold.
"That's the new cope," whispered the stranger. "Fine work, isn't it?"
"Awfully decent," Michael whispered back.
"All I hope is the acolytes will remember to put out the candles immediately after the Third Collect. It's so important," said the stranger.
"I expect they will," whispered Michael encouragingly.
Then the Office began, and Michael, waiting for a spiritual experience, communed that night with the saints of God, as during the Magnificat his soul rose to divine glories on the fumes of the aspiring incense. There was a quality in the voices of the boys which expressed for him more beautifully than the full Sunday choir could have done, the pathos of human praise and the purity of his own surrender to Almighty God. The splendours of the Magnificat died away to a silence and one of the clergy stepped from his place to read the Second Lesson. As he came down the chancel steps Michael's new friend whispered:
"The censing of the altar was all right. It's really a good thing sometimes to be a spectator—you know—one sees more."
Michael nodded a vague assent. Already the voice of the lector was vibrating through the church.
In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.
Michael thought to himself how he had come to St. Bartholomew's when Sunday was over. That was strange.
His countenance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow: and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.
"I wish that boy Wiggins wouldn't fidget with his zuchetto," Michael's friend observed.
And behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.
Michael felt an impulse to sob, as he mentally offered the best of himself to the worship of Christ, for the words of the lesson were striking on his soul like bells.
And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted.
"Now you see the other boy has started fidgeting with his," complained the young man.
And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
As the lector's retreating footsteps died away into the choir the words were burned on Michael's heart, and for the first time he sang the Nunc Dimittis with a sense of the privilege of personally addressing Almighty God. When the Creed was chanted Michael uttered his belief passionately, and while the Third Collect was being read between the exalted candles of the acolytes he wondered why never before had the words struck him with all their power against the fears and fevers of the night.
Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night, for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The acolytes lowered their candles to extinguish them: then they darkened the altar while the hymn was being sung, and Michael's friend gave a sigh of relief.
"Perfectly all right," he whispered.
Michael himself was sorry to see the gradual extinction of the altar-lights; he had concentrated upon that radiance his new desire of adoration and a momentary chill fell upon him, as if the fiends without were gaining strength and fury. All dread and doubt was allayed when, after the murmured Grace of Our Lord, the congregation and the choir and the officiant knelt in a silent prayer. The wind still shrieked and thundered: the gas-jets waved uneasily above the huddled forms of the worshippers: but over all that incense-clouded gloom lay a spirit of tranquillity. Michael said the Our Father to himself and allowed his whole being to expand in a warmth of surrender. The purification of sincere prayer, voiced more by his attitude of mind than by any spoken word, made him infinitely at peace with life.
When the choir and clergy had filed out and the sacristan like an old rook came limping down the aisle to usher the congregation forth into the dark wind