Of all the innumerable multitudes who for the infinitesimal fraction
of a second had this glimpse of the Divinity, none were so blankly and
profoundly astonished as Mr. Parchester. For--it may be because of his
subtly spiritual nature--he _saw_, and seeing believed. He dropped his
pen and let it roll across his manuscript, he sat stunned, every drop
of blood fled from his face and his lips and his eyes dilated.
While he had just been writing and arguing about God, there _was_ God!
The curtain had been snatched back for an instant; it had fallen
again; but his mind had taken a photographic impression of everything
that he had seen--the grave presences, the hierarchy, the effulgence,
the vast concourse, the terrible, gentle eyes. He felt it, as though
the vision still continued, behind the bookcases, behind the pictured
wall and the curtained window: _even now there was judgement!_
For quite a long time he sat, incapable of more than apprehending this
supreme realization. His hands were held out limply upon the desk
before him. And then very slowly his staring eyes came back to
immediate things, and fell upon the scattered manuscript on which he
had been engaged. He read an unfinished sentence and slowly recovered
its intention. As he did so, a picture of his congregation came to him
as he saw it from the pulpit during his evening sermon, as he had
intended to see it on the Sunday evening that was at hand, with Lady
Rupert in her sitting and Lady Blex in hers and Mrs. Munbridge, the
rich and in her Jewish way very attractive Mrs. Munbridge, running
them close in her adoration, and each with one or two friends they had
brought to adore him, and behind them the Hexhams and the Wassinghams
and behind them others and others and others, ranks and ranks of
people, and the galleries on either side packed with worshippers of a
less dominant class, and the great organ and his magnificent choir
waiting to support him and supplement him, and the great altar to the
left of him, and the beautiful new Lady Chapel, done by Roger Fry and
Wyndham Lewis and all the latest people in Art, to the right. He
thought of the listening multitude, seen through the haze of the
thousand electric candles, and how he had planned the paragraphs of
his discourse so that the notes of his beautiful voice should float
slowly down, like golden leaves in autumn, into the smooth tarn of
their silence, word by word, phrase by phrase, until he came to--
"Now to God the Father, God the Son----"
And all the time he knew that Lady Blex would watch his face and Mrs.
Munbridge, leaning those graceful shoulders of hers a little forward,
would watch his face....
Many people would watch his face.
All sorts of people would come to Mr. Parchester's services at times.
Once it was said Mr. Balfour had come. Just to hear him. After his
sermons, the strangest people would come and make confessions in the
beautifully furnished reception-room beyond the vestry. All sorts of
people. Once or twice he had asked people to come and listen to him;
and one of them had been a very beautiful woman. And often he had
dreamt of the people who might come: prominent people, influential
people, remarkable people. But never before had it occurred to Mr.
Parchester that, a little hidden from the rest of the congregation,
behind the thin veil of this material world, there was another
auditorium. And that God also, God also, watched his face.
And watched him through and through.
Terror seized upon Mr. Parchester.
He stood up, as though Divinity had come into the room before him. He
was trembling. He felt smitten and about to be smitten.
He perceived that it was hopeless to try and hide what he had written,
what he had thought, the unclean egotism he had become.
"I did not know," he said at last.
The click of the door behind him warned him that he was not alone. He
turned and saw Miss Skelton, his typist, for it was her time to come
for his manuscript and copy it out in the specially legible type he
used. For a moment he stared at her strangely.
She looked at him with those deep, adoring eyes of hers. "Am I too
soon, sir?" she asked in her slow, unhappy voice, and seemed prepared
for a noiseless departure.
He did not answer immediately. Then he said: "Miss Skelton, the
Judgement of God is close at hand!"