off the farm or up from the factory floor but with nothing about them of the gentleman. A man of your qualities—your endowments—is treasure not to be wasted. We don’t want to lose you in the Almighty’s ongoing battle, Clarence.”
Clarence brushed at the tickle as a gust from the noisy fan agitated the hair of his long sideburn. “Maimed as I am?”
“Don’t say maimed, say momentarily indisposed. Under the weather, as even young men sometimes are, eh? You’ll emerge from this siege of trouble strengthened, I am a hundred percent certain.”
“I fear that my will—”
“And consider your own personal welfare. Think selfishly for a moment. What lies outside the church for you? Nothing compared to what is within. You are no longer young, my friend. You have invested your assets in the office you occupy. How does Paul put it to Timothy? ‘Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.’ Neglect not the gift that is in thee,” Dearholt repeated, and began, “Faith—” He was becoming reflective, as when he revealed his desire to go toAlaska, and interrupted himself, “Would you like another lemonade? Would you disapprove if I fortified it with a splash of something stronger—say, a dash of good old Jamaican rum?”
“Oh no, no thank you.” The denomination was temperance, but not as fanatically as the Methodists and Baptists. “My pipe is vice enough. I wonder too if I have not taken enough of your evening. Mrs. Dearholt—”
“Is happy upstairs,” Dearholt concluded for him. “Obelia has her embroidery. Faith,” he went on, “is not some merely intellectual choice. It is basic human strength. It is manliness, and womanliness. It gives courage and cheer from the infant’s first steps to the aged’s last breath. Without it, we’re not alive, Reverend Wilmot. Without it, we’re the servant who buries his talent in the ground. It may seem strange for me to be telling you this, but you need to hear it, as I once needed to hear it, years ago. I was close to forty and the Panic of 1893 had knocked the stuffing out of a little business I had put my heart and soul into. I felt sorry for myself and walked the streets, right here in Paterson, and in the park by the Falls I heard a self-appointed preacher, a man some could say was simple, who catered to the poor without benefit of a church over his head or a vestment over his shoulders, but he told me what I needed to hear, and I’ve lived by it; it’s given me life, and pleasure in life. The Word is life, just as the Book says. The way, the truth, and the life. Everything outside the Book is just the hollow show of life. Oh, it can be plausible. It can be alluring. But the show belongs to the Devil’s realm, and in the end, when they wrap the show up, there’s nothing left onstage to see, just the fact of death.”
Clarence was moved that the other man had opened up to him so completely his innermost convictions, but he leftDearholt’s fine house still believing that the exact opposite was true: life, with its risks and ultimate defeat, lay with the calm, merciless, impersonal truths that godless men were daily uncovering in the wide world spread beyond the moldering walls of the shrinking castle keep. The Christian castle’s precincts had become for Clarence so claustral and musty and dark that they felt like the Devil’s tenements.
The minister of the Fourth Presbyterian Church was a member of the Presbytery of Jersey City, in the Synod of New Jersey. Clarence one day in August—having evaded the bribe of the Ocean Grove cottage—boarded a train at the Erie Railroad station on Market Street, and then stared out the sooty windows as Clifton and Passaic slid by. Coalyards, small brick factories, summer-tired trees, backyards dingy in their proximity to the tracks scattered and broke into a gap of Aquakanonck farms before Nutley and Belleville yielded to the
Clarence brushed at the tickle as a gust from the noisy fan agitated the hair of his long sideburn. “Maimed as I am?”
“Don’t say maimed, say momentarily indisposed. Under the weather, as even young men sometimes are, eh? You’ll emerge from this siege of trouble strengthened, I am a hundred percent certain.”
“I fear that my will—”
“And consider your own personal welfare. Think selfishly for a moment. What lies outside the church for you? Nothing compared to what is within. You are no longer young, my friend. You have invested your assets in the office you occupy. How does Paul put it to Timothy? ‘Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.’ Neglect not the gift that is in thee,” Dearholt repeated, and began, “Faith—” He was becoming reflective, as when he revealed his desire to go toAlaska, and interrupted himself, “Would you like another lemonade? Would you disapprove if I fortified it with a splash of something stronger—say, a dash of good old Jamaican rum?”
“Oh no, no thank you.” The denomination was temperance, but not as fanatically as the Methodists and Baptists. “My pipe is vice enough. I wonder too if I have not taken enough of your evening. Mrs. Dearholt—”
“Is happy upstairs,” Dearholt concluded for him. “Obelia has her embroidery. Faith,” he went on, “is not some merely intellectual choice. It is basic human strength. It is manliness, and womanliness. It gives courage and cheer from the infant’s first steps to the aged’s last breath. Without it, we’re not alive, Reverend Wilmot. Without it, we’re the servant who buries his talent in the ground. It may seem strange for me to be telling you this, but you need to hear it, as I once needed to hear it, years ago. I was close to forty and the Panic of 1893 had knocked the stuffing out of a little business I had put my heart and soul into. I felt sorry for myself and walked the streets, right here in Paterson, and in the park by the Falls I heard a self-appointed preacher, a man some could say was simple, who catered to the poor without benefit of a church over his head or a vestment over his shoulders, but he told me what I needed to hear, and I’ve lived by it; it’s given me life, and pleasure in life. The Word is life, just as the Book says. The way, the truth, and the life. Everything outside the Book is just the hollow show of life. Oh, it can be plausible. It can be alluring. But the show belongs to the Devil’s realm, and in the end, when they wrap the show up, there’s nothing left onstage to see, just the fact of death.”
Clarence was moved that the other man had opened up to him so completely his innermost convictions, but he leftDearholt’s fine house still believing that the exact opposite was true: life, with its risks and ultimate defeat, lay with the calm, merciless, impersonal truths that godless men were daily uncovering in the wide world spread beyond the moldering walls of the shrinking castle keep. The Christian castle’s precincts had become for Clarence so claustral and musty and dark that they felt like the Devil’s tenements.
The minister of the Fourth Presbyterian Church was a member of the Presbytery of Jersey City, in the Synod of New Jersey. Clarence one day in August—having evaded the bribe of the Ocean Grove cottage—boarded a train at the Erie Railroad station on Market Street, and then stared out the sooty windows as Clifton and Passaic slid by. Coalyards, small brick factories, summer-tired trees, backyards dingy in their proximity to the tracks scattered and broke into a gap of Aquakanonck farms before Nutley and Belleville yielded to the
Similar Books
