HOW EDOM WAS FAVOURED OF GOD AND MAMMON
In the years gone, the village of Edom had matured, even as little boys
wax to manhood. Time was when all but two trains daily sped by it so
fast that from their windows its name over the station door was naught
but a blur. Now all was changed. Many trains stopped, and people of the
city mien descended from or entered smart traps, yellow depot-wagons or
immaculate victorias, drawn by short-tailed, sophisticated steeds
managed by liveried persons whose scraped faces were at once impassive
and alert.
In its outlying parts, moreover, stately villas now stood in the midst
of grounds hedged, levelled, sprayed, shaven, trimmed and
garnished--grounds cherished sacredly with a reverence like unto that
once accorded the Front Room in this same village. Edom, indeed, had
outgrown its villagehood as a country boy in the city will often outgrow
his home ways. That is, it was still a village in its inmost heart; but
outwardly, at its edges, the distinctions and graces of urban
worldliness had come upon it.
All this from the happy circumstance that Edom lay in a dale of beauty
not too far from the blessed centre of things requisite. First, one by
one, then by families, then by groups of families, then by cliques, the
invaders had come to promote Edom's importance; one being brought by the
gracious falling of its little hills; one by its narrow valleys where
the quick little waters come down; one by the clearness of its air; and
one by the cheapness with which simple old farms might be bought and
converted into the most city-like of country homes.
The old stock of Edom had early learned not to part with any massive
claw-footed sideboard with glass knobs, or any mahogany four-poster, or
tall clock, or high-boy, except after feigning a distressed reluctance.
It had learned also to hide its consternation at the prices which this
behaviour would eventually induce the newcomers to pay for such junk.
Indeed, it learned very soon to be a shrewd valuer of old mahogany,
pewter, and china; even to suspect that the buyers might perceive
beauties in it that justified the prices they paid.
Old Edom, too, has its own opinion of the relative joys of master and
servant, the latter being always debonair, their employers stiff, formal
and concerned. It conceives that the employers, indeed, have but one
pleasure: to stand beholding with anxious solemnity--quite as if it were
the performance of a religious rite--the serious-visaged men who daily
barber the lawns and hedges. It is suspected by old Edomites that the
menials, finding themselves watched at this delicate task, strive to
copy in face and demeanour the solemnity of the observing
employer--clipping the box hedge one more fraction of an inch with the
wariest caution--maintaining outwardly, in short, a most reverent
seriousness which in their secret hearts they do not feel.
Let this be so or not. The point is that Edom had gone beyond its three
churches of Calvin, Wesley and Luther--to say nothing of one poor little
frame structure with a cross at the peak, where a handful of benighted
Romanists had long been known to perform their idolatrous rites. Now,
indeed, as became a smartened village, there was a perfect little
Episcopal church of redstone, stained glass and painted shingles, with a
macadam driveway leading under its dainty _porte-cochère_, and at the
base of whose stern little tower an eager ivy already aspired; a
toy-like, yet suggestively imposing edifice, quite in the manner of
smart suburban churches--a manner that for want of accurate knowledge
one might call confectioner's gothic.
It was here, in his old home, that the Reverend Allan Delcher Linford
found his first pastorate. Here from the very beginning he rendered
apparent those gifts that were to make him a power among men. It was
with a lofty but trembling hope that the young novice began his first
service that June morning, before a congregation known to be
hypercritical, composed as it was of seasoned city communicants,
hardened listeners and watchers, who would appraise his vestments,
voice, manner, appearance, and sermon, in the light of a ripe
experience.
Yet his success was instant. He knew it long before the service
ended--felt it infallibly all at once in the midst of his sermon on
Faith. From the reading of his text, "For God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed therein might not
perish, but have everlasting life," the worldly people before him were
held as by invisible wires running from him to each of them. He felt
them sway in obedience to his tones; they warmed with him and cooled
with him; aspired with him, questioned, agreed, and glowed with him.
They were his--one with him. Their eyes saw a young man in the splendour
of his early prime, of a faultless, but truly masculine beauty, delicate
yet manfully rugged, square-chinned, straight-mouthed, with tawny hair
and hazel eyes full of glittering golden points when his eloquence
mounted; clear-skinned, brilliant, warm-voiced, yet always simple,
direct, earnest; a storehouse of power, yet ornate; a source of
refreshment both physical and spiritual to all within the field of his
magnetism.
So agreed those who listened to that first sermon on Faith, in which
that virtue was said be like the diamond, made only the brighter by
friction. Motionless his listeners sat while he likened Faith to the
giant engine that has rolled the car of Religion out from the maze of
antiquity into the light of the present day, where it now waits to be
freighted with the precious fruits of living genius, then to speed on to
that hoped-for golden era when truth shall come forth as a new and
blazing star to light the splendid pageantry of earth, bound together in
one law of universal brotherhood, independent, yet acknowledging the
sovereignty of Omnipotence.
Rapt were they when, with rare verbal felicity and unstudied eloquence,
the young man pictured himself standing upon a lofty sunlit mountain,
while a storm raged in the valley below, calling passionately to those
far down in the ebullition to come up to him and mingle in the blue
serene of Faith. Faith was, indeed, a tear dropped on the world's cold
cheek of Doubt to make it burn forever.
Even those long since _blasé_ to pulpit oratory thrilled at the simple
beauty of his peroration, which ran: "_Faith!_ Oh, of all the flowers
that swing their golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none
so rich, so rare, as this one flower of Faith. Other flowers there may
be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be crushed in order that
their fragrance become perceptible. But this flower--"
In spite of this triumph, it had taken him still another year to prevail
over one of his hearers. True, she had met him after that first
triumphant ordination sermon with her black lashes but half-veiling the
admiration that shone warm in the gray of her eyes; and his low
assurance, "Nance, you _please_ me! Really you do!" as his yellow eyes
lingered down her rounded slenderness from summer bonnet to hem of
summer gown, rippled her face with a colour she had to laugh away.
Yet she had been obstinate and wondering. There had to be a year in
which she knew that one she dreamed of would come back; another in which
she believed he might; another in which she hoped he would--and yet
another in which she realised that dreams and hopes alike were
vain--vain, though there were times in which she seemed to feel again
the tingling life of that last hand-clasp; times when he called to her;
times when she had the absurd consciousness that his mind pressed upon
hers. There had been so many years and so much wonder--and no one came.
It had been foolish indeed. And then came a year of wondering at the
other. The old wonder concerning this one, excited by a certain fashion
of rendering his head in unison with his shoulders--as might the statue
of Perfect Beauty turn upon its pedestal--with its baser residue of
suspicion, had been happily allayed by a closer acquaintance with Allan.
One must learn, it seemed, to distrust those lightning-strokes of
prejudice that flash but once at the first contact between human clouds.
Yet in the last year there had come another wonder that excited a
suspicion whose troubling-power was absurdly out of all true proportion.
It was in the matter of seeing things--that is, funny things.
Doubtless she had told him a few things more or less funny that had
seemed to move him to doubt or perplexity, or to mere seriousness; but,
indeed, they had seemed less funny to her after that. For example, she
had told Aunt Bell the anecdote of the British lady of title who says to
her curate, concerning a worthy relative by marriage lately passed away,
toward whom she has felt kindly despite his inferior station: "Of course
I _couldn't_ know him here--but we shall meet in heaven." Aunt Bell had
been edified by this, remarking earnestly that such differences would
indeed be wiped out in heaven. Yet when Nancy went to Allan in a certain
bubbling condition over the anecdote itself and Aunt Bell's comment
thereon, he made her repeat it slowly, after the first hurried telling,
and had laughed but awkwardly with her, rather as if it were expected of
him--with an eye vacant of all but wonder--like a traveller not sure he
had done right to take the left-hand turn at the last cross-roads.
Again, the bishop who ordained him had, in a relaxed and social moment
after the ceremony, related that little classic of Bishop Meade, who,
during the fight over a certain disestablishment measure, was asked by a
lobbyist how he would vote. The dignified prelate had replied that he
would vote for the bill, for he held that every man should have the
right to choose his own way to heaven. None the less, he would continue
to be certain that a gentleman would always take the Episcopal way. To
Nancy Allan retold this, adding,
"You know, I'm going to use it in a sermon some time."
"Yes--it's very funny," she answered, a little uncertainly.
"Funny?"
"Yes."
"Do you think so?"
"Of course--I've heard the bishop tell it myself--and I know _he_ thinks
it funny."
"Well--then I'll use it as a funny story. Of course, it _is_ funny--I
only thought"--what it was he only thought Nancy never knew.
Small bits of things to wonder at, these were, and the wonder brought no
illumination. She only knew there were times when they two seemed of
different worlds, bereft of power to communicate; and at these times his
superbly assured wooing left her slightly dazed.
But there were other times, and different--and slowly she became used to
the idea of him--persuaded both by his own court and by the spirited
encomiums that he evoked from Aunt Bell.
Aunt Bell was at that time only half persuaded by Allan to re-enter the
church of her blameless infancy. She was still minded to seek a little
longer outside the fold that _rapport_ with the Universal Mind which she
had never ceased to crave. In this process she had lately discarded
Esoteric Buddhism for Subliminal Monitions induced by Psychic Breathing
and correct breakfast-food. For all that, she felt competent to declare
that Allan was the only possible husband for her niece, and her niece
came to suspect that this might be so.
When at last she had wondered herself into a state of inward
readiness--a state still governed by her outward habit of resistance,
this last was beaten down by a letter from Mrs. Tednick, who had been a
school friend as Clara Tremaine, and was now married, apparently with
results not too desirable.
"Never, my dear," ran the letter to Nancy, "permit yourself to think of
marrying a man who has not a sense of humour. Do I seem flippant? Don't
think it. I am conveying to you the inestimable benefits of a trained
observation. Humour saves a man from being impossible in any number of
ways--from boring you to beating you. (You may live to realise that the
tragedy of _the first_ is not less poignant than that of the second.)
Whisper, dear!--All men are equally vain--at least in their ways with a
woman--but humour assuredly preserves many unto death from betraying it
egregiously. Beware of him if he lack it. He has power to crucify you
daily, and yet be in honest ignorance of your tortures. Don't think I am
cynical--and indeed, my own husband is one of the best and dearest of
souls in the world, _the biggest heart_--but be sure you marry no man
without humour. Don't think a man has it merely because he tells funny
stories; the humour I mean is a kind of sense of the fitness of things
that keeps a man from forgetting himself. And if he hasn't humour, don't
think he can make you happy, even if his vanity doesn't show. He
can't--after the expiration of that brief period in which the vanity of
each is a holy joy to the other. Remember now!"
Curiously enough this well-intended homily had the effect of arousing in
Nancy an instant sense of loyalty to Allan. She suffered little flashes
of resentment at the thought that Clara Tremaine should seem to
depreciate one toward whom she felt herself turning with a sudden
defensive tenderness. And this, though it was clear to the level eye of
reason that Clara must have been generalising on observations made far
from Edom. But her loyal spirit was not less eager to resent an affront
because it might seem to have been aimless.
And thereafter, though never ceasing to wonder, Nancy was won. Her
consent, at length, went to him in her own volume of Browning, a pink
rose shut in upon "A Woman's Last Word"--its petals bruised against the
verses:
"What so false as truth is,
False to thee?
Where the serpent's tooth is,
Shun the tree.
"Where the apple reddens,
Never pry--
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I.
"Be a god and hold me
With a charm!
Be a man and fold me
With thine arm!"
That was a moment of sweetness, of utter rest, of joyous peace--fighting
no longer.
A little while and he was before her, proud as a conquerer may be--glad
as a lover should.
"I always knew it, Nance--you _had_ to give in."
Then as she drooped in his arms, a mere fragrant, pulsing, glad
submission--
"You have _always_ pleased me, Nancy. I know I shall never regret my
choice."
And Nancy, scarce hearing, wondered happily on his breast.