A LITTLE ST. AGNUS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 45, 6 November 1902, Page 23

A LITTLE ST. AGNUS.

When Gerard Foster consented to fresco the walls of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament it was as much a surprise to him as it was a surprise and a cause for chagrin to some others, and for the same reason : because there seemed such a sad incongruity between his doing the work and a fact pretty well known in the village of pleasant Vallu\, tho fact of his absolute agnosticism. It happened this way, his being asked to do the work and his consenting ; the church, as far. as its mere erection went, had long been finished ; but when the time came for its interior decoration there was a pause. Father Bouchard was a man whose autistic sensibilities were as !keen as his heart was holy. As a youth ho had been about to enter the Paris Ecole des Beux Arts when he took the other resolution to enter a theological seminary. But memories and love of the old world treasures of immortal art still clung to him, and now •that he had succeeded in having a faiir tabernacle built to the honor of God, he did not intend to have his harmony in stono marred by such a discord as bad painting on its walls would make. Of course there was no native genius in Pleasant Valley who could be trusted to renlise tho pastor's ideals. lTor was there money enough in the treasury to justify bringing an artist from Now York or Boston, so the work was left undone When some of the impatient parishioners urged its completion by what meagre local talent there was, and a few grumbled and wondered if Father Bouchard did not have some notions too high for the simple folk of Pleasant Valley,' Father Bouchard smiled and said he was praying to that first painter, St. Luke, to send them an artist. (After he made arrangements with Gerard Foster to do the work, ho reproached St. Luke fo,r not sending him one with more of the grace of God in his hear.t). Whatever St. Luke had to do with it. Foster would certainly have explained his presence there differently. Two reasons, he would have said, drifted him thither. First, ho went seeking health after his serious illness — Pleasant Valley was supposed to be a hot-bed of salubrity. Secondly, he was so thoroughly sick and tired of everything and place he knew. At 35 ho was suffering fatally from satiety. So when he heard of the little village, ho went there endeavoring to get utterly away from tho palling, unsatisfying old 'life —that, indeed,f had. given him success, as far as the acknowledged skill of his brush went, but which had, he was beginning to realise, been so meagre in actual gratification. He was weary of it all. He scarcely hoped his spirits would heal there But ho hoped the body would, and in his desperation all ho asked for his mind was a kind of fongetfulness which, in a sardonic humor he primly'promised himself, the monotonous and primitive simplicity of the village life would induce—drugging him as it were. When he had been there about a month, at least one of his purposes began to bo realised His strength began to rctur.n. After sitting there several weeks on the vemndah, looking away o\er tho fields and across to the hills, whose erentle, graceful uprise mado tho valley, he began to bo able to take short walks o\er the meadows,and then tramps up the hills. As for his mind, with his innate turn for psychology he derived much amusement from its condition.' For he was gradually lapsing into that state of Vlaciditv which he and his old fellow-students used to characterise scoffingly as ' bovine.' There was not positi\e happiness, but tho bitter discontent and unrest were being succeeded by a quiet indifference that amused him, while it soot hod He said to himself that he was banning to comprehend the delightful insouciance of the lilies of the field By his complete isolation, as well as his deliberate desire to forget, the burdensi, worries and excitement of the old wild life were beginning to fall from him as unloosened fetters It grew to bo so that he scarcely thought of the old times save uhen Father Bouchard came to \isit—as somehow ho did more frequently since Foster had begun to board there. For beside the' fact that the dear shepherd felt that everyone in the village was in his flock— diid not even the stray ones belong to his Master ?—thero were other reasons for his I'ikinpr to stop there for' a chat with Poster For it was an old, sweet, delight to hoar some one talk again of the pictures and sculptures he loved and used to know And then it was interest ing to hoar of tho wor.k of the new schools Besides ho felt that Foster must pine now and then to talk of ihe^o things, and thero was not a multitude of ihe .inner circle 'in Plea slants Valley, though it was not sunk in primitive: ignorance. So many an eveniner, as Foster was sitting smokiner, Father Bouchard would come along, and tho two —tho jaded man of the world and the g^eat strong pastor* —would sit almost till morning talking art liter iture. and tho material of both—life ' Ono evening when they wore tocothr-r and some one else had dropped in, the old thorn, the decoration of the church, camo lip for consideration In a moment of generosity Foster offered to finish the walls With his returning strength tho old desire to use the brush was beginning, to tickle his fin ere rs He but \ oiood said FatherBouchard, a wish that had been lurking in his heart over Since he heard that some one who had exhibited at tho Salon was going to summer 'in Pleasant Valley As soon as he was able, Gerard Foster began his work. It half amused him, because it was a depar.turo

from his ordinary themes. Ecclesiastical art he had known, but on other men's canvases, however, he knew he could <lo what was required of him here, and he was glad to have an opportunity to repay the good Pere Bouchard, as he called him, lor his many kindnesses. So every day or so thereafter might be seen on the scallolding Gerard Foster, sceptic and blase man-of-the-world, working away on some symbol whose value his artiisuc sense could apprehend, uf his intellect did not approve. Often as he sat there working away, whistling boiuo old snatch irom the opeivas or a lilt of a student's song, lie smiled at how his old comrades of the Bohemian days would laugh if they saw him — ' to think old 1 ostcr would come to this ! ' By the end of the winter it was all imished, except a small shrine at the end of the church), to St. Agnes. Just as he was about to begin work in this an attack of his former exhaustion came upon him. He had to discontinue, and spend some time in a suck bed. When strength to be out returned, there did not immediately follow the power to work. In fact, the weeks began to slip past without his feeling able to use anm and pigment, and mind, which is guido for both. And with this failure of energy to assert itself again, there reappeared the old depression, to which ho used to be a victim, when it seemed so futile to hope to achieve anything worth while. All his former weariness with things haunted him again, till once more hq \vtls m that slough of despair irom which he had hoped himself rescued — that bitter slough whence, if it were not for bus own mother,, he would have actually gone deliberately down to the rner and cast himself upon its breast to be borne forth upon the life beyond, of which. he could formulate nothing, and, therefore, hope nothing. ... To cap his unhappy 3tate, the elements were against him. The sun of spring, much belated, seemed to have been thwarted in its longed-for journey northward. Continual rains made nearly every (jay gloomy. The sun seemed to have fongotten how to break through the clouds. When his unhappy moods returned to him, he at ILrst thought they came from physical exhaustion, and that ho would shortly be able to take up his work where he left it off. But when the days went on and his mental indisposition intensified, he began to grow impatient. Besides, he was compunctious about the shrine, which he pnomised for Easter. During his several months' work, he had been amused at how much Church history he had learned as he browsed around Father Bouchard's librany for data and symbols. Now his attention had to be fastened on the character of St. Agnes. Foster had hitherto known nothing about the saints, and cared less. It seemed inconsistent that he was to portray something to edify those, who did believe. It seemed almost a mockery. Again he laughed at how diverted the old friends would be at the situation. However, laugh as they or he might, the story of St. Agnes he had road and thought so much about that the poetry of her brief history had made an impression upon lym. But he had not found the exact way he wished to present it. One night after he had been making sketches, he went to sleep and dreamed that he saw her. The next morning, as he woke early, the sun was shining through his window, repentant as it were for its long desertion of the earth. Being unable to get back to sleep, he rose and started on a constitutional across the meadows. The morning was one of those first pf spring, full of surprises and delights. Everything seemed washed clean by the recent rains. New blades of grass shone as the sunbeams fell across them. The old earth seemed to have had a bath in some fountain of youth, everything seemed so fresh and gneen. Foster had not felt so invigorated for ages, as ho walked alonpHo took a long run across the countiw and on his way back he happened to pass the church. Since his se\eral weeks' illness he had not been there. He thought he would look in and see how things seemed now. With the glow of his walk, upon him, he said to himself : 'By Jove, 1 feel so new and strong and benevolent, I could ff° m n- n d sing the doxoloey. That tramp in the clean grass makes me feel almost like a catechumen.' Mass was being celebrated. Tt was the first early Mass. he had ever seen, and the spectacle quite appealed to him. Here was, indeed, a realisation of that idyllic rnmitno celebration Walter Pater makes Marius " the Epicurean attend, and the beauty of it took possession of him as it had done of Marius. A deeper sense of what this ceremony^. stood for came over him as in the quiet of the mornfng the priest in white robes went to and fro upon the white altar, where the pure flames of the candles burned, and the few devotees wrapped in prayer and worship paid morning horn a pro to God, their God whom ho did not klnow. But somehow, it came over him that it was actually sx God. and that this solemn, vet sincere ceremonial going on there at the altar, was no"t all mummery as the pomp and ceremonial on some of the great feast days in the old world churches had seemed to him , c mlcnsit y of his first impressions cooled a little, he glanced about the building. His eyes passed a few scats in front of him ; there near him, the publican and sinner, a young girl was kneeling. The sunlight cominjr in one of the windows fell upon her ; it lighted on lion lace and wove her hair into an aureole around her l-oste,!- nearly threw up his cap and shouted— a little saint Afines ' 7t was a divine moment of /inspiration ! Wild prospects streamed through his brain. If she would only kneel that wav a little while.he would catch that expression, that pose. Never had his hardened heart, full o unbelief as it was, conceived such an jexpression so Rlonfied by an inspiration of love, he know nothing about Heavens ! If he could only reproduce that true fervor his shruno in tho little St. Agnes would be famous, it would surely make people pray, it would— oh if he

could only get her to kneel there for him— perhaps Father Bouchard could persuade her — but what woman could keep or assume snch an expression to order. No* ho must i get it distinctly into his '.memory and conjure tti again with the aid of his imagination. He lingered till Mass* was over then he hurried home like mad and gathered what things he needed. He was at work ifri a short time. That day more of the old glow of his first efforts in art's service was upon him than ho had known for a long time. The next few mornings he went to Mass. One morning, he met Father McLean, who said to him : 'You don't get to work this early, do you ? You know Mass is being celebrated just now.' ' I am going to Mn^, 1 answered Foster, with a twinkle in has eye that baffled the young priest. ' Arn't you nfrn«id we'll make a Catholic of you it you do such things ? ' ' Not much afraid, wish you could,' said Foster. There in the same place when he went in, was his unconscious model. There was a great charm about her face ; simpliqity and purity were its keynotes, a spirituality he had never seen before illuminating 'it, and adding to it a certain intelluctuality he had not hitherto known, though his friendships had been with women whose mental calibre had undeniable distinction. That was the thing that first set him thinking — her unmistakable, cool intelligence about what she was doing and about what was about going forward on the altar. * What a strange thing it was that the persuasion to which Agnes had been a martyr in that old, far-off time still endured, still had its supporters ! As he watches his ' little Saint Agnes ' praying at the Consecration, he knew her devotion would not flinch from the severest ordeal for wj^at she was worshipping there on the altar. It was the first ray athwart the darkness — what then did happen in Galilee ? over and over he began thinking. It lent a grave quality to his work as he continued finishing the shrine, a reverence to his presentation of what he was just beginming to comprehend. When the shrine was completed and Father Bouchard was grateful beyond his expectations, he was also baffled beyond comprehension at how a man with ideas such as Gerard Foster had honestly confessed, had been able to grasp and depicit with his brush that impalpable spiritual beauty born Only of an exaltation which he had felt sure was an unknown quality to Gerard Foster. Yet there was a quality in his liight and tone that Father Bouchard knew only too well came not from mere artistic .composition, but from an innate spiiituality — Kaplmcl and others in ' the day-spring of art so fresh and dewy' had worked in it with their pigments. About a year after this Foster returned to Pleasant Valley. He had been abroad again, but had come back to Father Bouchard to be baptised. The morning of his First Communion he lingered in tlie church after everyone else had gone. As he stayed there making a long thanksgiving, wrapped in tho comfort and the ioy of it, the sacristan came out to drape the church — there was to be a funeral. After a few minutes the funeral procession came into the church. Very sweetly the organist was playing tho Chopin march. Across the aisle and pews was borne to him the fragrance of flowers. It was the first ser\ ice for the departed he had* ever attended, and the beauty of it made a profound impression upon him. lio said to lumself : ' you've come to the best port, old man, whence to embark for eternity.' As 1 the Mass 'vent mi ho arov a little exhausted, having had no breakfast, \,\<~ he 'lid r<.t like to leave. As his attention flagged a little ho glanced about the church, his eyes falling " upon hiis own woik, and he lived again some of his old life ; then his coming to Pleasant Valley and his conversion came before his mental vision. Aa his eyes rested on tho shrine of St. Agnes, spontaneously they passed to the pew whence lie had received his inspiration — the ' little St Annos ' was not there. He thought again of how sho had been not only his inspiration, b\it the sweet instrument, ps it Wera, of^his conversion, first revealing to him a faWth ho had not realised before. He felt that he would like to see her again. She was probably some giil of the village, but no matter he felt he would like to sro her, perhaps know her. Onco again the tones of tho Mnrche Funebre came plaintively from the organ loft, distract main's thought. He glanced at the cortege. It was apparently a young person there borne out under all the whito flowers, perhaps — she ? One afternoon later he strayed into tho church, thinking he would look, over his work critically. It had been finished long enough for him to get the right perspective. As ho entered the church he saw an old man and Woman standing in front of the shrine he had decorated. As he drew ncan, look ( i/ng intensely at what power he had put into it. ' I wish some of the fellows could see it : I believe it would convert them ! ' As ho drew closer ho observed the aged couple. The woman was crvjng ; ho heard her say : ' Isn't .it like her "> T fool a^ if T could just come here every day and almost have her back again.' Foster bent his head and passed into a pew. ' O, little St. Agnes, thank Cod that onco at least my brush has been true, thank Him that you led me to His feet ' — ' Doriahoe's Magazine '