Fascinated, they stared through screen-doors down the dark central corridor, flanked by jars of weeping ferns. A sweet funereal odor of carnations and cedar-wood floated on the cool heavy air. Dimly, beyond a central partition, they saw a heavy casket, on a wheeled trestle, with rich silver handles and velvet coverings. The thick light faded there in dark.
“They’re laid out in the room behind,” said George Graves, lowering his voice.
To rot away into a flower, to melt into a tree with the friendless bodies of unburied men.
At this moment, having given to misery all he had (a tear), the very Reverend Father James O’Haley, S.J., among the faithless faithful only he, unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, emerged plumply from the chapel, walked up the soft aisle rug with brisk short— legged strides, and came out into the light. His pale blue eyes blinked rapidly for a moment, his plump uncreased face set firmly in a smile of quiet benevolence; he covered himself with a small well-kept hat of black velvet, and set off toward the avenue. Eugene shrank back gently as the little man walked past him: that small priestly figure in black bore on him the awful accolade of his great Mistress, that smooth face had heard the unutterable, seen the unknowable. In this remote outpost of the mighty Church, he was the standard-bearer of the one true faith, the consecrate flesh of God.
“They don’t get any pay,” said George Graves sorrowfully.
“How do they live, then?” Eugene asked.
“Don’t you worry!” said George Graves, with a knowing smile.
“They get all that’s coming to them. He doesn’t seem to be starving, does he?”
“No,” said Eugene, “he doesn’t.”
“He lives on the fat of the land,” said George Graves. “Wine at every meal. There are some rich Catholics in this town.”
“Yes,” said Eugene. “Frank Moriarty’s got a pot full of money that he made selling licker.”
“Don’t let them hear you,” said George Graves, with a surly laugh. “They’ve got a family tree and a coat of arms already.”
“A beer-bottle rampant on a field of limburger cheese, gules,” said Eugene.
