Ideal (8 page)

“Please!” she whispered. “I need your help.”

“Get out of here!”

“I took such a chance coming to you.”

“Get out of here!”

“Don't you know how alone I am?”

“Get out!”

Her hands fell limply and her black bag swung at the tips of two lifeless fingers. She turned and walked to the door.

He stood, his throat heaving, his breath coming in gasps.

She walked out slowly, and he saw her hair in the darkness of the landing, and he heard her steps descending the stairs.

Dwight Langley slammed the
door.

“Dear Miss Gonda,

Some may call this letter a sacrilege. Some may call it a betrayal of my sacred trust. And yet it is not. For when I write it, I do not feel as a sinner stooping to mundane matters. I feel as I do when I compose my sermons, and that is something which I fail to understand, which will pass the comprehension of any who might chance to read these humble lines.

A wide, wide world lies at your feet, Miss Gonda, a sad, sinful world to whom you are but the condensed symbol of all its flaming sins. To countless erring souls you are but the flower of evil, with all the power and all the dark beauty that evil has possessed since time immemorial. Yet when my sermons scourge those works of corruption which
offer you to the world, I find no words in my soul against you.

For when I look at you, it seems to me sometimes—and the Lord forbid that any of my flock should ever hear this, for no understanding can I expect from their poor, blind hearts—it seems to me sometimes that we are working for the same cause, you and I. That is all I can say to you, for it is not in my power to explain it.

But when I lay my soul on the altar of the Eternal Spirit, when I call my brother man to the Truth of life, the sacred Truth and the sacred Joy that is beyond their sad little anguishes of the flesh, beyond their ephemeral little pleasures—it seems to me that in your heart there is that same eternal, transcendent, sublime Truth which my words struggle in vain to disclose to them. We are traveling different roads, Miss Gonda, you and I, but we are bound to the same destination.

Or are we? Perhaps, you may laugh in scorn, you great priestess of Mammon, at these words of a humble man of God who believes, in his folly, that
you
are that which he is trying to bring to this earth of ours. But I believe as I do, because, in my heart of hearts, I believe also that you will understand.

Your humble servant,

Claude Ignatius Hix

. . . Slosson Blvd.

Los Angeles, California”

O
n the evening of May 5th, Claude Ignatius Hix found only a dollar eighty-seven in his collection box.

He sighed and counted the worn nickels, the dull little coppers once more. He put them down carefully into a rusty tin box and locked it.

The Temple of Eternal Truth of the Spirit needed an organ so badly. Well, he would still get it. He would go without that reconditioned car he had been waiting to buy for such a long time; he could ride the trolleys a little longer, but he would get the organ.

He blew out the two tapers on the pulpit, tall, white, real tapers which he always lit for the services. He closed the windows. He took a broom from a corner and swept the floor carefully, between the long rows of narrow, backless, unpainted benches. The broom swished in the silence of the long, dim barn and the electric bulb in the middle of the ceiling threw his lonely shadow across the benches.

He stood at the open door and looked at the sky, which was clear with a bright moon; it would not rain tomorrow. He was glad. The roof of the Temple of Eternal Truth of the Spirit leaked badly between its unpainted beams.

Rain would spoil the long cotton bands nailed to the dark walls inside the Temple; bands with careful, even letters of red and blue, which he himself had painted for so many long, weary, painstaking hours.

B
LESSED ARE TH
E MEEK: FOR THEY SHAL
L INHERIT THE EARTH.

B
LESSED ARE THE POOR
IN SPIRIT: FOR THEIR
S IS THE KINGDOM OF
HEAVEN.

H
E THAT LOVET
H HIS LIFE SHALL LOS
E IT AND HE THAT HAT
ETH HIS LIFE IN THIS
WORLD SHALL KEEP IT
UNTO LIFE ETERNAL.

Claude Ignatius Hix walked slowly up the aisle. His tall lean body was always carried erect, as if an old-fashioned photographer had clamped an iron vise to his back, to keep it faultlessly straight. His thick black hair was beginning to recede off his high forehead and white streaks were growing slowly on his temples. His head was carried high,
and his long, thin face was stern, patient, serene in its haughty calm with its dark eyes, fiery and young among the first, dry little wrinkles. His clothes were always black and he carried his long, white fingers entwined on his chest, and his clothes made one think of somber, floating garments, even though his white collar was slightly wilted and his nails were not always clean.

He sat down on the steps of his old pulpit and his forehead fell wearily into the palm of his hand. He could no longer hide from himself the dim, growing anguish of his heart. The Temple of Eternal Truth of the Spirit did not fare so well anymore. His congregation was slipping away from him, slowly, steadily, like a thin trickle of sand from an old, leaking jug. Fewer faces were raised to his pulpit at each service, fewer hearts were there to receive the cherished, passionate words he had toiled so devotedly to prepare for them.

He knew well the reason. A rival had moved into his neighborhood, not six blocks away, and he had seen the old faces he knew so well in the new Church of the Cheery Corner, the Little Church with the Big Blue Dome, where the Reverend Essie Twomey “guided in glory.” The Reverend Essie Twomey had chestnut curls worn down her neck and buds of Cecile Brunner roses in her curls. The Church of the Cheery Corner had shingled walls painted a thick, glossy white and a real dome of baby blue. Claude Ignatius Hix would not have minded it if his flock had found consolation and spiritual food outside of his Temple; but he did not believe in Sister Twomey's sincerity.

He had attended one of her sermons announced as “The Service Station of the Spirit” in big red letters over the door of her church. Sister Twomey had had a whole service station built behind her pulpit, with tall glass pumps labeled: P
URITY,
D
EVOTION,
P
RAYER,
and P
RAYER WITH
F
AITH
U
NS
URPASSED
; and tall, slender young boys stood in attendance, dressed in white uniforms with gold wings on their shoulders,
and white caps with gold visors and gold letters that said: C
REED
O
IL
I
NC.
She had preached a long sermon to the effect that when you travel the hard road of life, you must be sure that your tank is filled with the best gas of Faith, that your tires are full of the air of Kindness, that your radiator is cooled with the sweet water of Temperance, that your battery is charged with the power of Righteousness, and that you beware of treacherous Detours which lead to perdition. She had warned against blasphemous road hogs, and given long, vigorous samples of their blasphemy, as contrasted to the manner of a driver pure in heart. The congregation had laughed happily, and sighed thoughtfully, and dropped crackling bills into the collection box in the shape of a gasoline can.

Claude Ignatius Hix sat alone on his pulpit steps. Beyond his open door the night was dark and soft, and a lonely streetcar rattled somewhere in the silence.

This had been the evening when, for the first time in his life, he had not finished his sermon. It had been the best sermon he had ever written; he had squeezed, out of the depth of his soul, the most delicate, the most eloquent, words his faith could command. But when he had stood on the pulpit and looked down at the rows of gray, empty benches, at the white eyes of a blind old woman, the bowed neck of a lanky tramp who drew patterns with his toe in the dust of the floor, the nodding bald head of a beggar who had fallen asleep, the few stooped, frayed, weary, huddled bodies scattered through the room, his words had died on his lips. He had cut the sermon short, given his blessing, and watched them file out slowly, holding in his hand, guiltily, the tin cup with their humble donations.

He knew well why his Temple had been deserted that evening. The Reverend Essie Twomey was conducting one of her famous midnight services: “The Night Life of the Angels.” It was a daring innovation that kept her humble parishioners up at a later hour than they had ever
stayed before and it had proved to be Sister Twomey's greatest success. Claude Ignatius Hix had seen it: there was a bar built behind her pulpit, a glittering bar of tinsel and gold foil, with a bartender in flowing white robes, with a big white beard, vaguely reminiscent of Saint Peter, except for the fact that he had neglected to remove his pince-nez; there were angels in white garments, with white, powdered faces and lips painted a deep pink, sitting on tall stools, holding cocktails in the form of long paper scrolls with mixed quotations from the scriptures. The Reverend Essie Twomey, small and plump in a Grecian tunic of silver gauze, her white, round arms bare and loaded with calla lilies, talked for many hours, swaying, closing her eyes, moaning softly, chanting hoarsely, screaming triumphantly, her round cheeks stretched into a radiant smile.

He could not fight it. He had failed. He had nothing left but to move out of the neighborhood, to give up the poor souls for whom he had fought so desperately. He had failed.

He rose heavily from the pulpit steps and threw his shoulders back, and walked steadily down the aisle to the door. He pressed a button to light the electric cross on the wall, over his pulpit. That cross was his greatest pride, the most expensive fixture of his Temple, erected at the cost of many sacrifices, many privations through many long years. He lit it at night, when he went home, leaving the Temple door wide-open. Over the entrance was a sign, T
HIS DOOR NEVER
CLOSES
, and all night long in the depth of the dark, narrow barn a white cross of fire flamed on a blank wall.

Claude Ignatius Hix walked slowly across a desolate backyard to his home, a forlorn shack behind the Temple. The backyard was a dreary stretch of ruts and dried weeds, lighted red and blue by the thick spurts of steam billowing over a neon sign on a yellow brick laundry next door.

Halfway to his house, Claude Ignatius Hix stopped suddenly. He
heard steps behind him, very light, hurried steps, and he turned to see the tall, dark shadow of a woman disappearing into the Temple.

He stood still, perplexed. He had never seen a visitor at such a late hour. And the stranger seemed well dressed; not the type of worshipper he had ever met in the neighborhood. He should not disturb her; but perhaps she needed advice in the secret sorrow that had sent her, long past midnight, to this lonely place of worship. He walked resolutely back to the Temple.

The woman stood under the cross. Her long black suit was severe as a man's; her golden hair rose like a halo over her face, the pale face of a saint. For the flash of a second, he thought suddenly, crazily, that a statue of the Madonna stood there, at his altar, in the rays of the cross.

He took a step forward. Then he stopped short. He knew her face, but he could not believe it. He passed his hand over his eyes. He gasped:

“You . . . you're not . . .”

“Yes,” she answered. “I am.”

“Not . . . Kay Gonda?”

“Yes,” she said. “Kay Gonda.”

“To what . . .” he stuttered, “to what do I owe this honor, the rare honor of . . .”

“To a murderer,” she answered.

“You don't mean . . . you don't mean that it's true, those rumors . . . those vile rumors . . .”

“I'm hiding. From the police.”

“But . . . how . . .”

“Do you remember a letter? A letter you wrote me?”

“Yes.”

“That's why I'm here. May I stay?”

Claude Ignatius Hix walked slowly to the open door and locked it. Then he came back to her. He said:

“That door has not been closed for thirteen years. It will be closed tonight.”

“Thank you.”

“You are safe here. You are safe as in that kingdom beyond where no human arrow can reach you.”

She sat down and took off her hat and shook her blond hair.

He stood looking down at her, his fingers entwined on his chest.

“My sister,” he said, and his voice trembled, “my poor misguided sister, it's a heavy burden that you've taken upon your shoulders.”

She looked up at him and in her clear, blue eyes was a sorrow no screen had ever shown to the world.

“Yes,” she answered, “a heavy burden. And sometimes I do not know how much longer I want to carry it.”

He smiled sadly. But in his heart it seemed to him that the long years of toil were light on his shoulders; in his heart was a great joy, such as he had never known. And he felt guilty.

He felt as if he were taking something to which he had no right, even though he could not name what it was nor how he was taking it. On the dark wall, the flaming cross looked at him with accusation, and the dozens of white bulbs were as dozens of eyes, fixed, stern, condemning.

Then he knew what it was that he had forgotten.

He turned away from her. His head was high and his fingers were tense and grim on his chest. He said softly, “You are safe here, sister. No one will follow you here. No one will reach you, but one person only.”

“And who is that?”

“Yourself.”

She looked up at him, her head bent to one shoulder, her eyes curious.

“Myself?”

“You may escape the judgment of the world. But the judgment of your conscience will follow you wherever you go.”

She said softly:

“I do not understand you.”

His eyes were blazing. He stood over her, grim, austere as a judge.

“You have committed a sin. A mortal sin. You have broken a Commandment. You have taken a human life. Will you carry that on your conscience to the end of your days?”

“But what can I do?”

“Great is the power of our Father. And great is His kindness. And forgiveness awaits the darkest of sinners who offers his penitence and confession from the depth of his soul.”

“But if I confess, they will put me in jail.”