A young woman, seeing Virginia, came to whisper to her in a rasping aside. She "had St. Joseph" for Easter, she said, would Virginia help her "fix him"? Virginia nodded, she loved to assist those devout young women who decorated, with exquisite flowers and hundreds of candles, the various side altars of the church.
There was a constant crisping of shoes in the aisle now, the pews were filling fast. "Lord, where do all these widows come from?" thought Susan. A "Brother," in a soutane, was going about from pillar to pillar, lighting the gas. Group after group of the pendent globes sprang into a soft, moony glow; the hanging glass prisms jingled softly. The altar-boys in red, without surplices, were moving about the altar now, lighting the candles. The great crucifix, the altar-paintings and the tall candle-sticks were swathed in purple cloth, there were no flowers to-night on the High Altar, but it twinkled with a thousand candles.
The hour began to have its effect on Susan. She felt herself a little girl again, yielding to the spell of the devotion all about her; the clicking rosary-beads, the whispered audible prayers, the very odors,--odors of close-packed humanity,--that reached her were all a part of this old mood. A little woman fluttered up the aisle, and squeezed in beside her, panting like a frightened rabbit. Now there was not a seat to be seen, even the benches by the confessionals were full.
And now the organ broke softly, miraculously, into enchanting and enveloping sound, that seemed to shake the church bodily with its great trembling touch, and from a door on the left of the altar the procession streamed,--altar-boys and altar-boys and altar-boys, followed through the altar-gate by the tall young priest who would "say the Stations." Other priests, a score of them, filled the altar-stalls; one, seated on the right between two boys, would presently preach.
The procession halted somewhere over in the distant: arches, the organ thundered the "Stabat Mater." Susan could only see the candles and the boys, but the priest's voice was loud and clear. The congregation knelt and rose again, knelt and rose again, turned and swayed to follow the slow movement of the procession about the church.
When priest and boys had returned to the altar, a wavering high soprano voice floated across the church in an intricate "Veni Creator." Susan and Mary Lou sat back in their seats, but Virginia knelt, wrapped in prayer, her face buried in her hands, her hat forcing the woman in front of her to sit well forward in her place.