A Man's World. Edwards Albert

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СКАЧАТЬ a Sunday. At the vesper service, all of us seated on the grass at the edge of the lake, the Father had preached about our bodies being the temples of God. As usual, Oliver led the young people's meeting after supper. These more intimate gatherings meant more to me than the larger assemblies. Our text was "Blessed are the pure in heart." I remember clearly how Oliver looked, tall and stalwart and wonderful in his young manhood. He has a great metropolitan church now and he has won his way by oratory. The eloquence on which he was to build his career had already begun to show itself.

      Mary sang. I have also a sharp picture of her. She wore a light lawn dress, which the brilliant moon-light turned almost white. Her years seemed to have fallen from her and she looked as she had done on her wedding night. In her rich, mellow contralto she sang the saddest of all church music: "He was despised."

      Something delayed me after the service and when I looked about for Oliver and Mary they were gone. I went to her house but the maid said they had not come. The mystery of religious fervor and the glory of the night kept me from waiting on the verandah, called me out to wander down by the water's edge. But I wearied quickly of walking and, coming back towards the house, lay down on the grass under a great tree. The full moon splashed the country round with sketches of ghostly white and dense black shadows.

      Two ideas were struggling in my mind. There was an insistent longing that Margot might be with me to share this wonder of religious experience. Conflicting with this desire, compelled, I suppose, by the evening's texts, was a strong push towards extreme asceticism. I was impatient for Oliver's return. I wanted to ask him why our church had abandoned monasticism.

      How long I pondered over this I do not know. Perhaps I fell asleep, but at last I heard them coming back through the woods. There was something in Oliver's voice, which checked my impulse to jump up and greet them. It was something hot and hurried, something fierce and ominous. But as they came out into a patch of moonlight, although they fell suddenly silent, I knew they were not quarreling. Mary cautioned him with a gesture and went into the house. Through the open windows I heard her tell the negro maid that she might go home. I heard her say "Good night" and lock the back door. The girl hummed a lullaby as she walked away. All the while Oliver sat on the steps.

      I do not know what held me silent, crouching there in the shadow. I had no idea of what was to come. But the paralyzing hand of premonition was laid upon me. I knew some evil was approaching, and I could not have spoken or moved.

      "Oliver," she said, in a voice I did not know, as she came out on the porch, "you must go away. It is wrong. Dreadfully wrong."

      But he jumped up and threw his arms about her.

      "It's sin, Oliver," she said, "you're a minister."

      "I'm a man," he said, fiercely.

      Then they went into the house. It was not till years afterwards, when I read Ebber's book – "Homo Sum" that I realized, in the story of that priest struggling with his manhood, what the moment must have meant to Oliver.

      I tiptoed across the grass to the shade of the house. A blind had been hurriedly pulled down – too hurriedly. A thin ribbon of light streamed out below it.

      I could not now write down what I saw through that window, if I tried. But in the frame of mind of those days, with my ignorance of life, it meant the utter desecration of all holiness. Oliver and Mary had stood on my highest pedestal, a god and goddess. I saw them in the dust. No. It seemed the veriest mire.

      I turned away at last to drown myself. It was near the water's edge that they picked me up unconscious some hours later. The doctors called it brain fever. Almost a month passed before I became rational again. I was amazed to find that in my delirium I had not babbled of what I had seen. Neither Oliver nor Mary suspected their part in my sickness. More revolting to me than what they had done was the hypocrisy with which they hid it.

      Above all things I dreaded any kind of an explanation and I developed an hypocrisy as gross as theirs. I smothered my repugnance to Mary's kisses and pretended to like to have Oliver read the Bible to me. And when I was able to get about again, I attended meetings as before. There was black hatred in my heart and the communion bread nauseated me. What was left of the summer was only a longing for the day when I should leave for school. Nothing mattered except to escape from these associations.

      I am not sure what caused it – the weeks of religious hysteria which accompanied my conversion, what I saw through the crack below the window curtain, or the fever – but some time between the coming of "Salvation" Milton and my recovery, that little speck of gray matter, that minute ganglia of nerve-cells, with which we believe, ceased to function.

      BOOK II

      I

      Early in September Oliver took me East to school. It was not one of our widely advertised educational institutions. The Father had chosen it, I think, because it was called a Presbyterial Academy and the name assured its orthodoxy.

      I remember standing on the railroad platform, after Oliver had made all the arrangements with the principal, waiting for the train to come which was to carry him out of my sight. How long the minutes lasted! It is a distressing thing for a boy of sixteen to hate anyone the way I hated my cousin. I was glad that he was not really my brother.

      It is strange how life changes our standards. Now, when I think back over those days, I am profoundly sorry for him. It was, I think, his one love. It could have brought him very little joy for it must have seemed to him as heinous a sin as it did to me.

      Five years later he married. I am sure he has been scrupulously faithful to his wife. She is a woman to be respected and her ambition has been a great stimulus to his upclimbing. But I doubt if he has really loved her as he must have loved Mary to break, as he did, all his morality for her. To him love must have seemed a thing of tragedy. But boyhood is stern. I had no pity for him.

      His going lifted a great weight from me. As I walked back alone to the school, I wanted to shout. I was beginning a new life – my own. I had no very clear idea of what I was going to do with this new freedom of mine. I can only recall one plank in my platform – I was going to fight.

      The one time I can remember fighting at home, I had been thrashed by the boy, caned by the school teacher and whipped by the Father, when he noticed my black eye. Fighting was strictly forbidden. After this triple beating I fell into the habit of being bullied. As even the smallest boy in our village knew I was afraid to defend myself, I was the victim of endless tyrannies. The first use I wanted to make of my new freedom was to change this. I resolved to resent the first encroachment.

      It came that very day from one of the boys in the fourth class. I remember that his name was Blake. Just before supper we had it out on the tennis-court. It was hardly fair to him. He fought without much enthusiasm. It was to him part of the routine of keeping the new boys in order. To me it was the Great Emancipation. I threw into it all the bitterness of all the humiliations and indignities of my childhood. The ceremonial of "seconds" and "rounds" and "referee" was new to me. At home the boys just jumped at each other and punched and bit, and pulled hair and kicked until one said he had enough. As soon as they gave the word to begin, I shut my eyes and hammered away. We battered each other for several rounds and then Blake was pronounced victor on account of some technicality.

      They told me, pityingly, that I did not know how to fight. But all I had wanted was to demonstrate that I was not afraid. I had won that. It was the only fight I had in school. Even the bullies did not care to try conclusions with me, and I had no desire to force trouble. I had won a respect in the little community which I had never enjoyed before.

      In a way it was a small matter, but it was portentous for me. It was the first time I had done the forbidden thing and СКАЧАТЬ