A MORNING AT ST. PAUL'S
Wheaton ran away from the livelier spirits of the Knights of Midas, who
urged him to join in a celebration at the club after the ball broke up.
He pleaded the necessity of early rising and went home and to bed,
where, however, he slept little, but lay dreaming over the incidents of
the night, particularly those in which he had figured. Many people had
congratulated him, and while there was an irony in much of this, as if
the whole proceeding were a joke, he had taken it all in the spirit, in
which it had been offered. He felt a trifle anxious as to his reception
at the breakfast table as he dressed, but his mirror gave him
confidence. The night had been an important one for him, and he could
afford to bear with his fellows, who would, he knew, spare him no more
than they spared any one else in their chaff.
They flaunted at him the morning papers with portraits of the king and
queen of the ball bracketed together in double column. He took the
papers from them as he replied to their ironies, and casually inspected
them while the Chinaman brought in his breakfast.
"Didn't expect to see you this morning," said Caldwell, the
Transcontinental agent, stirring his coffee and winking at Brown, the
smelter manager. "You society men are usually shy at breakfast."
Wheaton put down his paper carelessly, and spread his napkin.
"Oh, a king has to eat," said Brown.
"Well," said Wheaton, with an air of relief, "it's worth something to be
alive the morning after."
But they had no sympathy for him.
"Listen to him," said Caldwell derisively, "just as if he didn't wish he
could do it all over again to-night."
"Not for a million dollars," declared Wheaton, shaking his head
dolefully.
"Yes," said Captain Wheelock, "I suppose that show last night bored you
nearly to death."
"I'm always glad to see these fellows sacrifice themselves for the
public good," said Brown. "Wheaton's a martyr now, with a nice pink
halo."
"Well, it doesn't go here," said the army officer severely. "We've got
to take him down a peg if he gets too gay."
"Why, we've already got one sassiety man in the house," said Caldwell,
"and that's hard enough to bear." He referred to Raridan, who was
breakfasting in his room.
They were addressing one another, rather than Wheaton, whose presence
they affected to ignore.
"I suppose there'll be no holding him now," said Caldwell. "It's like
the taste for strong drink, this society business. They never get over
it. It's ruined Raridan; he'd be a good fellow if it wasn't for that."
"Humph! you fellows are envious," said Wheaton, with an effort at
swagger.
"Oh, I don't know!" said Brown, with rising inflection. "I suppose any
of us could do it if we'd put up the money."
"Well," said Wheaton, "if they let you off as cheaply as they did me,
you may call it a bargain."
"Oh, he jewed 'em down," persisted Caldwell, explaining to the others,
"and he has the cheek to boast of it. I'll see that Margrave hears
that."
"Yes, you do that," Wheaton retorted. "Everybody knows that Margrave's
an easy mark." This counted as a palpable hit with Brown and Wheelock.
Margrave was notorious for his hard bargains. Wheaton gathered up his
papers and went out.
"He takes it pretty well," said Caldwell as they heard the door close
after Wheaton. "He ought to make a pretty good fellow in time if he
doesn't get stuck on himself."
"Well, I guess Billy Porter'll take him down if he gets too gay,"
exclaimed Brown.
"Porter may leave it to his daughter to do that," said Caldwell, shaking
out the match with which he had lighted his cigar, and dropping it into
his coffee cup.
"It'll never come to that," returned Brown.
"You never can tell. People were looking wise about it last night," said
Captain Wheelock, who was a purveyor of gossip.
"Don't trouble yourself," volunteered Caldwell, who read the society
items thoroughly every morning and created a social fabric out of them.
"I guess Warry will have something to say to that."
At the bank Wheaton found that the men who came in to transact business
had a knowing nod for him, that implied a common knowledge of matters
which it was not necessary to discuss. A good many who came to his desk
asked him if he was tired. They referred to the carnival ball as a
"push" and said it was "great" with all the emphasis that slang has
imparted to these words.
Porter came down early and enveloped himself in a cloud of smoke. This
in the bank was the outward and visible sign of a "grouch." When he
pressed the button to call one of the messengers, he pushed it long and
hard, so that the boys remarked to one another that the boss had been
out late last night and wasn't feeling good.
Porter did not mention the ball to Wheaton in any way, except when he
threw over to him a memorandum of the bank's subscription to the fund,
remarking: "Send them a check. That's all of that for one year."
Wheaton made no reply, but did as Porter bade him. It was his business
to accommodate himself to the president's moods, and he was very
successful in doing so. A few of the bank's customers made use of him as
a kind of human barometer, telephoning sometimes to ask how the old man
was feeling, and whether it was a good time to approach him. He
attributed the president's reticence this morning to late hours, and was
very careful to answer promptly when Porter spoke to him. He knew that
there would be no recognition by Porter of the fact that he had
participated in a public function the night before; he would have to
gather the glory of it elsewhere. He thought of Evelyn in moments when
his work was not pressing, and wondered whether he could safely ask her
father how she stood the night's gaiety. It occurred to him to pay his
compliments by telephone; Raridan was always telephoning to girls; but
he could not quite put himself in Raridan's place. Warry presumed a good
deal, and was younger; he did many things which Wheaton considered
undignified, though he envied the younger man's ease in carrying them
off.
One of Porter's callers asked how Miss Porter had "stood the racket," as
he phrased it.
"Don't ask me," growled Porter. "Didn't show up for breakfast."
William Porter did not often eat salad at midnight, but when he did it
punished him.
As Wheaton was opening the afternoon mail he was called to the
telephone-box to speak to Mrs. Jordan, a lady whom he had met at the
ball. She was inviting a few friends for dinner the next evening to meet
some guests who were with her for the carnival. She begged that Mr.
Wheaton would pardon the informality of the invitation and come. He
answered that he should be very glad to come; but when he got back to
his desk he realized that he had probably made a mistake; the Jordans
were socially anomalous, and there was nothing to be gained by
cultivating them. However, he consoled himself with the recollection of
one of Raridan's social dicta--that a dinner invitation should never be
declined unless smallpox existed in the house of the hostess. He swayed
between the disposition to consider the Jordans patronizingly and an
honest feeling of gratitude for their invitation, as he bent over his
desk signing drafts.
He found the Jordans very cordial. He was their star, and they made
much of him; he was pleased that they showed him a real deference; when
he spoke at the table, the others paused to listen. He knew the other
young men slightly; one was a clerk in a railway office, and the other
was the assistant manager of the city's largest dry goods house. The
guests were young women from Mrs. Jordan's old home, in Piqua, Ohio.
(Mrs. Jordan always gave the name of the state.) Wheaton realized that
these young women were much easier to get on with than Miss Porter and
other young women he had known latterly; they were more pointedly
interested in pleasing him.
After a few days the carnival seemed to be forgotten; Wheaton's fellows
at The Bachelors' stopped joking him about it. Raridan had never
referred to it at all. On Sunday the newspapers printed a resume of the
social features of the carnival, and Wheaton read the familiar story,
and all the other social news in the paper, in bed. He noticed with a
twinge an item stating that Mrs. J. Elihu Jordan had entertained at
dinner on Thursday evening for the Misses Sweetser, of Piqua, but was
relieved to find that neither paper printed the names of the guests. The
bachelors were very lazy on Sunday morning, excepting Raridan, who
attended what he called "early church." This practice his fellow-lodgers
accepted in silence as one of his vagaries. That a man should go to
church at seven o'clock and then again at eleven, signified mere
eccentricity to Raridan's fellow-boarders, who were not instructed in
catholic practices, but divided their own Sunday mornings much more
rationally between the barber shop, the post-office and their places of
business.
It was a bright morning; the week just ended had been, in a sense,
epochal, and Wheaton resolved to go to church. It had been his habit to
attend services occasionally, on Sunday evenings, at the People's
Church, whose minister frequently found occasion to preach on topics of
the day or on literary subjects. Doctor Morningstar was the most popular
preacher in Clarkson; the People's Church was filled at all services; on
Sunday evenings it was crowded. Doctor Morningstar's series of lectures
on the Italian Renaissance, illustrated by the stereopticon, and his
even more popular course of lectures on the Victorian novelists, had
appealed to Wheaton and to many; but the People's Church was not
fashionable; he decided to go this morning to St. Paul's, the Episcopal
Cathedral. It was the oldest church in town, and many of the first
families attended there. All fashionable weddings in Clarkson were held
in the cathedral, not because it was popularly supposed to confer a
spiritual benefit upon those who were blessed from its altar, but for
the more excellent reason that the main aisle of this Gothic edifice
gave ample space for the free sweep of bridal trains, and the chancel
lent itself charmingly to the decorative purposes of the florist.
Wheaton found Raridan breakfasting alone, the others of the mess not
having appeared. Raridan's good morning was not very cordial; he had
worn a gloomy air for several days. Whenever Raridan seemed out of
sorts, Caldwell always declared solemnly that Warry had been writing
poetry.
"Going to church as usual?" Wheaton asked amiably.
Every Sunday morning some one asked Raridan this question; he supposed
Wheaton was attempting to be facetious.
"Yes," he answered patiently; and added, as usual, "better go along."
"Don't care if I do," Wheaton replied, carelessly.
Raridan eyed him in surprise.
"Oh! glad to have you."
They walked toward the cathedral together, Wheaton satisfied that his
own hat was as shiny and his frock coat as proper as Raridan's; their
gloves were almost of the same shade. There was a stir in the vestibule
of the cathedral, which many people in their Sunday finery were
entering. Wheaton had never been in an Episcopal church before; it all
seemed very strange to him--the rambling music of the voluntary, the
unfamiliar scenes depicted on the stained glass windows, the soft light
through which he saw well-dressed people coming to their places, and the
scent of flowers and the faint breath of orris from the skirts of women.
The boy choir came in singing a stirring processional that was both
challenge and inspiration. It was like witnessing a little drama: the
procession, the singing, the flutter of surplices as the choir found
their stalls in the dim chancel. Raridan bowed when the processional
cross passed him. Wheaton observed that no one else did so.
A young clergyman began reading the service, and Wheaton followed it in
the prayer book which Raridan handed him with the places marked. He felt
ashamed that the people about him should see that the places had to be
found for him; he wished to have the appearance of being very much at
home. He suddenly caught sight of Evelyn Porter's profile far across the
church, and presently her father and their guests were disclosed. He
soon discovered others that he knew, with surprise that so many men of
unimpeachable position in town were there. Here, then, was a stage of
development that he had not reckoned with; surely it was a very
respectable thing to go to church,--to this church, at least,--on Sunday
mornings. The bewilderment of reading and chanting continued, and he
wondered whether there would be a sermon; at Doctor Morningstar's the
sermon was the main thing. He remembered Captain Wheelock's joke with
Raridan, that "the Episcopal Church had neither politics nor religion;"
but it was at least very aristocratic.
He stood and seated himself many times, bowing his head on the seat in
front of him when the others knelt, and now the great figure of Bishop
Delafield came from somewhere in the depths of the chancel and rose in
the pulpit. The presence of the bishop reminded him unpleasantly of the
Porters' sun-porch and of the disgraceful encounter there. The
congregation resettled themselves in their places with a rustle of
skirts and a rattling of books into the racks. It was not often that the
bishop appeared in his cathedral; he was rarely in his see city on
Sundays; but whenever he preached men listened to him. Wheaton was
relieved to find that there was to be a cessation of the standing up and
sitting down which seemed so complicated.
He now found that he could see the Porter pew easily by turning his head
slightly. The roses in Evelyn's hat were very pretty; he wondered
whether she came every Sunday; he concluded that she did; and he decided
that he should attend hereafter. The bishop had carried no manuscript
into the pulpit with him, and he gave his text from memory, resting one
arm on the pulpit rail. He was an august figure in his robes, and he
seemed to Wheaton, as he looked up at him, to pervade and possess the
place. Wheaton had a vague idea of the episcopal office; bishops were,
he imagined, persons of considerable social distinction; in his notion
of them they ranked with the higher civil lawgivers, and were comparable
to military commandants. In a line with the Porters he could see General
Whipple's white head--all the conditions of exalted respectability were
present.
_And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they
strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, 'For now
the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.'_
_For now the Lord hath made room for us._ The preacher sketched lightly
the primal scene to which his text related. He knew the color and light
of language and made it seem to his hearers that the Asian plain lay
almost at the doors of the cathedral. He reconstructed the simple social
life of the early times, and followed westward the campfires of the
shepherd kings. He built up the modern social and political structure,
with the home as its foundation, before the eyes of the congregation. A
broad democracy and humanity dominated the discourse as it unfolded
itself. The bishop hardly lifted his voice; he did not rant nor make
gestures, but he spoke as one having authority. Wheaton turned uneasily
and looked furtively about. He had not expected anything so earnest as
this; there was a tenseness in the air that oppressed him. What he was
hearing from that quiet old man in the pulpit was without the gloss of
fashion; it was inconsonant with the spirit of the place as he had
conceived it. Doctor Morningstar's discourses on Browning's poetry had
been far more entertaining.
_For now the Lord hath made room for us._ The preacher's voice was even
quieter as he repeated these words. "We are very near the heart of the
world, here at the edge of the great plain. Who of us but feels the
freedom, the ampler ether, the diviner air of these new lands? We hear
over and over that in the West, men may begin again; that here we may
put off our old garments and re-clothe ourselves. We must not too
radically adopt this idea. I am not so sanguine that it is an easy
matter to be transformed and remade; I am not persuaded that geography
enters into heart or mind or soul so that by crossing the older borders
into a new land we obliterate old ties. Here we may dig new wells, but
we shall thirst often, like David, for a drink of water from the well by
the gate of Bethlehem."
Wheaton's mind wandered. It was a pleasure to look about over these
well-groomed people; this was what success meant--access to such
conditions as these. The fragrance of the violets worn by a girl in the
next pew stole over him; it was a far cry to his father's stifling
harness shop in the dull little Ohio town. His hand crept to the pin
which held his tie in place; he could not give just the touch to an
Ascot that Warry Raridan could, but then Warry had practised longer.
The old bishop's voice boomed steadily over the congregation. It caught
and held Wheaton's attention once more.
"It is here that God hath made room for us; but it is not that we may
begin life anew. There is no such thing as beginning life anew; we may
begin again, but we may not obliterate nor ignore the past. Rather we
should turn to it more and more for those teachings of experience which
build character. Here on the Western plains the light and heat of
cloudless skies beat freely upon us; the soul, too, must yield itself to
the sun. The spirit of man was not made for the pit or the garret, but
for the open."
Wheaton stirred restlessly, so that Raridan turned his head and looked
at him. He had been leaning forward, listening intently, and had
suddenly come to himself. He crossed his arms and settled back in his
seat. A man in front of him yawned, and he was grateful to him. But
again his ear caught an insistent phrase.
"Life would be a simple matter if memory did not carry our yesterdays
into our to-days, and if it were as easy as Cain thought it was to cast
aside the past. A man must deal with evil openly and bravely. He must
turn upon himself with reproof the moment he finds that he has been
trampling conscience under his feet. An artisan may slight work in a
dark corner of a house, thinking that it is hidden forever; but I say to
you that we are all builders in the house of life, and that there are no
dark corners where we may safely practise deceit or slight the task God
assigns us. I would leave a word of courage and hope with you.
Christianity is a militant religion; it strengthens those who stand
forth bravely on the battle line, it comforts and helps the
weak-hearted, and it lifts up those who fall. I pray that God may
freshen and renew courage in us--courage not as against the world, but
courage to deal honestly and fairly and openly with ourselves."
The organ was throbbing again; the massive figure had gone from the
pulpit; the people were stirring in their seats. The young minister who
had read the service repeated the offertory sentences, and the voice of
a boy soprano stole tremulously over the congregation. Raridan had left
the pew and was passing the plate. The tinkle of coin reassured Wheaton;
the return to mundane things brought him relief and restored his
confidence. His spirit grew tranquil as he looked about him. The
pleasant and graceful things of life were visible again.
The voice of the bishop rose finally in benediction. The choir marched
out to a hymn of victory; people were talking as they moved through the
aisles to the doors. The organ pealed gaily now; there was light and
cheer in the world after all. At the door Wheaton became separated from
Raridan, and as he stood waiting at the steps Evelyn and her friends
detached themselves from the throng on the sidewalk and got into their
carriage. Mr. Porter, snugly buttoned in his frock coat, and with his
silk hat tipped back from his forehead, stood in the doorway talking to
General Whipple, who was, as usual in crowds, lost from the more agile
comrade of his marches many. Wheaton hastened down to the Porter
carriage, where the smiles and good mornings of the occupants gave him
further benediction. Evelyn and Miss Warren were nearest him; as he
stood talking to them, Belle Marshall espied Raridan across his
shoulders.
"Oh, there's Mr. Raridan!" she cried, but when Wheaton stood aside,
Raridan had already disappeared around the carriage and had come into
view at the opposite window with a general salutation, which included
them all, but Miss Marshall more particularly.
"I'm sure that sermon will do you good, Mr. Raridan," the Virginia girl
drawled. She was one of those young women who flatter men by assuming
that they are very depraved. Even impeccable youngsters are susceptible
to this harmless form of cajolery.
"Oh, I'm always good. Miss Porter can tell you that."
"Don't take my name in vain," said Evelyn, covertly looking at him, but
turning again to Wheaton.
"You see your witness has failed you. Going to church isn't all of being
good."
Wheaton and Evelyn were holding a lively conversation. Evelyn's
animation was for his benefit, Raridan knew, and it enraged him. He had
been ready for peace, but Evelyn had snubbed him. He was, moreover,
standing in the mud in his patent leather shoes while another man
chatted with her in greater dignity from the curb. His chaff with Miss
Marshall lacked its usual teasing quality; he was glad when Mr. Porter
came and took his place in the carriage.
Raridan had little to say as he and Wheaton walked homeward together,
though Wheaton felt in duty bound to express his pleasure in the music
and, a little less heartily, in the sermon. Raridan's mind was on
something else, and Wheaton turned inward to his own thoughts. He was
complacent in his own virtue; he had made the most of the talents God
had given him, and in his Sunday evening lectures Doctor Morningstar had
laid great stress on this; it was the doctor's idea of the preaching
office to make life appear easy, and he filled his church twice every
Sunday with people who were glad to see it that way. As Wheaton walked
beside Raridan he thought of the venerable figure that had leaned out
over the congregation of St. Paul's that morning, and appealed in his
own mind from Bishop Delafield to Doctor Morningstar, and felt that the
bishop was overruled. As he understood Doctor Morningstar's preaching it
dealt chiefly with what the doctor called ideality, and this, as near as
Wheaton could make out, was derived from Ruskin, Emerson and Carlyle,
who were the doctor's favorite authors. The impression which remained
with him of the morning at St. Paul's was not of the rugged old bishop's
sermon, which he had already dismissed, but of the novel exercises in
the chancel, the faint breath of perfumes that were to him the true odor
of sanctity, and what he would have called, if he had defined it, the
high-toned atmosphere of the place. The bishop was only an occasional
visitor in the cathedral; he was old-fashioned and a crank; but no doubt
the regular minister of the congregation preached a cheerfuller idea of
life than his bishop, and more of that amiable conduct which is, as
Doctor Morningstar was forever quoting from a man named Arnold,
three-fourths of life.
When Wheaton reached his room he found an envelope lying on his table,
much soiled, and addressed, in an unformed hand, to himself. It
contained a dirty scrap of paper bearing these words:
"Jim: I'll be at the Occidental Hotel tonight at 8 o'clock. Don't
fail to come.
BILLY."