If Mark had had the least inclination to be sorry for himself and
indulge in the flattery of regret, it vanished in this music. Rolling
down through time on the billows of the mighty Gregorian it were as
grotesque to pity oneself as it were for an Arctic explorer to build a
snowman for company at the North Pole.
Mark came out of St. John's, Cowley, into the suburban prettiness of
Iffley Road, where men and women in their Sunday best tripped along in
the April sunlight, tripped along in their Sunday best like newly
hatched butterflies and beetles. Mark went in and out of colleges all
day long, forgetting about the problem of his immediate future just as
he forgot that the people in the sunny streets were not really
butterflies and beetles. At twilight he decided to attend Evensong at
St. Barnabas'. Perhaps the folk in the sunny April streets had turned
his thoughts unconsciously toward the simple aspirations of simple
human nature. He felt when he came into the warm candle-lit church like
one who has voyaged far and is glad to be at home again. How everybody
sang together that night, and how pleasant Mark found this
congregational outburst. It was all so jolly that if the organist had
suddenly turned round like an Italian organ-grinder and kissed his
fingers to the congregation, his action would have seemed perfectly
appropriate.
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