This was the origin of the rites more public, yet certainly esoteric, that he at last found himself able to establish.It took a long time, it took a year, and both the process and the result would have been - for any who knew - a vivid picture of his good faith.No one did know, in fact - no one but the bland ecclesiastics whose acquaintance he had promptly sought, whose objections he had softly overridden, whose curiosity and sympathy he had artfully charmed, whose assent to his eccentric munificence he had eventually won, and who had asked for concessions in exchange for indulgences.Stransom had of course at an early stage of his enquiry been referred to the Bishop, and the Bishop had been delightfully human, the Bishop had been almost amused.Success was within sight, at any rate from the moment the attitude of those whom it concerned became liberal in response to liberality.The altar and the sacred shell that half encircled it, consecrated to an ostensible and customary worship, were to be splendidly maintained; all that Stransom reserved to himself was the number of his lights and the free enjoyment of his intention.When the intention had taken complete effect the enjoyment became even greater than he had ventured to hope.He liked to think of this effect when far from it, liked to convince himself of it yet again when near.He was not often indeed so near as that a visit to it hadn't perforce something of the patience of a pilgrimage; but the time he gave to his devotion came to seem to him more a contribution to his other interests than a betrayal of them.Even a loaded life might be easier when one had added a new necessity to it.
How much easier was probably never guessed by those who simply knew there were hours when he disappeared and for many of whom there was a vulgar reading of what they used to call his plunges.These plunges were into depths quieter than the deep sea-caves, and the habit had at the end of a year or two become the one it would have cost him most to relinquish.Now they had really, his Dead, something that was indefensibly theirs; and he liked to think that they might in cases be the Dead of others, as well as that the Dead of others might be invoked there under the protection of what he had done.Whoever bent a knee on the carpet he had laid down appeared to him to act in the spirit of his intention.Each of his lights had a name for him, and from time to time a new light was kindled.This was what he had fundamentally agreed for, that there should always be room for them all.What those who passed or lingered saw was simply the most resplendent of the altars called suddenly into vivid usefulness, with a quiet elderly man, for whom it evidently had a fascination, often seated there in a maze or a doze; but half the satisfaction of the spot for this mysterious and fitful worshipper was that he found the years of his life there, and the ties, the affections, the struggles, the submissions, the conquests, if there had been such, a record of that adventurous journey in which the beginnings and the endings of human relations are the lettered mile-stones.He had in general little taste for the past as a part of his own history; at other times and in other places it mostly seemed to him pitiful to consider and impossible to repair; but on these occasions he accepted it with something of that positive gladness with which one adjusts one's self to an ache that begins to succumb to treatment.To the treatment of time the malady of life begins at a given moment to succumb; and these were doubtless the hours at which that truth most came home to him.The day was written for him there on which he had first become acquainted with death, and the successive phases of the acquaintance were marked each with a flame.
The flames were gathering thick at present, for Stransom had entered that dark defile of our earthly descent in which some one dies every day.It was only yesterday that Kate Creston had flashed out her white fire; yet already there were younger stars ablaze on the tips of the tapers.Various persons in whom his interest had not been intense drew closer to him by entering this company.He went over it, head by head, till he felt like the shepherd of a huddled flock, with all a shepherd's vision of differences imperceptible.He knew his candles apart, up to the colour of the flame, and would still have known them had their positions all been changed.To other imaginations they might stand for other things - that they should stand for something to be hushed before was all he desired; but he was intensely conscious of the personal note of each and of the distinguishable way it contributed to the concert.There were hours at which he almost caught himself wishing that certain of his friends would now die, that he might establish with them in this manner a connexion more charming than, as it happened, it was possible to enjoy with them in life.In regard to those from whom one was separated by the long curves of the globe such a connexion could only be an improvement: it brought them instantly within reach.Of course there were gaps in the constellation, for Stransom knew he could only pretend to act for his own, and it wasn't every figure passing before his eyes into the great obscure that was entitled to a memorial.There was a strange sanctification in death, but some characters were more sanctified by being forgotten than by being remembered.The greatest blank in the shining page was the memory of Acton Hague, of which he inveterately tried to rid himself.For Acton Hague no flame could ever rise on any altar of his.
