CHAPTER VII
A PRAYER FOR DIVINE GRACE
Mariona had not, when the Twentieth Century dawned, quite broken with all its traditions. It was still considered bad form to display wealth if you had it; and honest poverty still had sincere admirers among the first citizens. It was better to have had a grandfather who “settled” in the thirties than to be possessed of much money. There had been a time when it was not respectable to stay away from church,—when only here and there some persons, usually called “queer,” habitually refused the offices of religion. But the old churches had begun to follow their congregations up-town on the very sensible theory that the individual church is much like any other institution that depends on public support,—it must make itself easy for the public to find.
So, many people continued to go to church in Mariona,—the old element of the community from force of habit and later comers because their neighbors did, which is not to say that all were not moved by religious impulses of the sincerest sort. Though we may not love our neighbors as ourselves in the strictest sense of the commandment we nevertheless like to appear well in their eyes. The sight of Wiggins and Mrs. Wiggins going to church in their best clothes and of the Wiggins children, equally splendid, going to Sunday-school, is well calculated to awaken in the Morgansons over the way a worthy ambition to be equally virtuous and splendid. Copeland, the lawyer who never practised, had announced the dictum that in Mariona, to be respectable, a man must pay pew rent and own a lot in Beech Hill cemetery; and Copeland’s dicta were entitled to the respectful attention of all men.
Ezra Dameron was of the old order. He still attended all the services of the Central Presbyterian Church, of which he had been a member for forty years. He had held nearly all the offices in the giving of the congregation at one time or another, beginning in his young manhood as secretary of the Sunday-school and gradually rising to be an elder, a position of dignity and honor in the communion, which he held for twenty years. He had lately refused further election, on the plea of advancing years; but he continued a most faithful member of the Central Church, where his pew was under the very shadow of the pulpit.
The hypocrite is not a lovable character; and yet we may sometimes condemn him with an excess of zeal. It is something gained when a bad man realizes, no matter how ignobly, that he must deceive the outer world in order to be countenanced; the only weakness of his position being that he can not wholly deceive himself, though he may go far toward doing so. Ezra Dameron had begun to deteriorate in his young manhood and his pettiness and sordidness had grown steadily. Through many years he had submitted the other cheek and worn a grieved and wounded air, as though the world were using him harshly. His wife’s family had not understood him; they had taken his daughter away from him; and now that they had educated her according to their own ideas, they had flung her back upon him, with an injunction to take good care of her lest fierce penalties be visited upon him. He was a martyr, he told himself; and his vision was marred by that form of spiritual myopia which cuts man off from honest self-examination.
Ezra Dameron leaned upon his church—not in a spiritual so much as a social sense. It afforded him the only opportunity he cared for of appearing before his fellows clothed in his old broadcloth coat, that was a veritable garment of righteousness. He was a man of little imagination, but to walk down the long aisle to his pew during the playing of the voluntary, and to hear the hymns and the more ambitious efforts of the choir, and then to settle back for the sermon—these simple experiences touched him, much as a summer breeze plays upon the leafy crest of a rough old tree without communicating any motion to the trunk.
“I usually go to prayer meeting,” said Ezra Dameron to Zelda, one Thursday evening shortly after her home-coming.
“Yes, father.”
She hesitated a moment. She had gone to church with him on Sunday as a matter of course, and she debated now whether to offer to go to the prayer meeting. Her decision was formed suddenly.
“Your mother usually went with me,” her father said.
“I don’t remember. But I should like to go. I shall be ready whenever you are.”
“I shall be glad to have you go when you like. Of course a young woman often has conflicting engagements. Don’t feel bound to go when more tempting things present themselves. I find a certain rest in a mid-week hour of praise and meditation.”
He bowed his head a trifle, as was his way in saying something he wished to make impressive.
“Yes; I should think that would be so,” said Zelda.
They walked together to the church, where the prayer meeting was held in the Sunday-school room. There were not more than twenty people present, most of them elderly persons. A few young people came, but Zelda did not know them. One was the president of the Christian Endeavor Society; the others were teachers in the Sunday-school.
The pastor, the Reverend Arthur Martin, was a young man, without perceptible phylactery of his calling. He wore a gray sack-coat and a blue four-in-hand tie, and was very good-looking. He read from the Bible and prayed. A hymn followed, and everybody sang, except Zelda. An old gentleman—one of the elders—commented on the passage of Scripture; then prayer was offered by another member of the congregation. The services were simple and unpretentious and had the interest of novelty for Zelda.
It had not occurred to her that her father would participate; he sat deep in meditation during an interval of silence in the room. Presently the minister said:
“Mr. Dameron, please lead in prayer.”
The old man rose slowly in his place and after a moment began to speak, his head lifted, his eyes open and gazing at a spot on the wall beyond the minister’s head. Zelda’s heart beat fast. The experience was wholly new and dismaying. She felt oppressed, suffocated, as she bowed her head and clasped her hands in her lap. Her father’s voice struck strange upon her ears as he made his petition. He seemed in a way transformed and uplifted: the words of his prayer were singularly well chosen as he expressed thanks to God for many blessings. He asked the divine mercy for the sick and for all who walked in the valley of the shadow of death. He prayed that they might be safely restored to health, or, if God willed it, received into the heavenly kingdom. Help was invoked for the church and all other agencies of mercy; for the pastor in his labors, and the Sunday-school, the very foundation and hope of the church.
“Now we especially beg Thy heavenly light upon the parents of this congregation. We thank Thee for the priceless gift of our children. Guide us in Thy infinite wisdom that we may lead them aright. Make us gentle, make us merciful, make us patient, that in all our labors for them we may fall into no error. For the little children, for the young men and women of this household of faith, we beg Thy tenderest care, O merciful Father, for through them Thou wilt lead us to Thy heavenly kingdom at last.”
His participation through many years in these services had given Ezra Dameron an easy facility in speaking of divine things. The phraseology of prayer came naturally to his lips; in public devotions a mood of exaltation fell on him; there was a kind of intoxication in this hour in which he found an opportunity for the expression of his faith. These weekly experiences touched his vanity; he knew that his prayers and his testimonies of personal experience were a feature of the Thursday night meetings; a long line of pastors had spoken to him of his beautiful gift in prayer.
Zelda heard her father’s voice with a kind of awe. Prayer still held for her a mystery; she had been taught to pray by her mother, and she had carried through the years a feeling of trust and faith in a power not her own, but it was unrelated to sects or creeds. She had gone to countless churches while abroad,—but chiefly in the tourist’s spirit of adventure. The Merriams had been Presbyterians originally, but as a family they no longer had any unity of religious faith. Mrs. Forrest had married an Episcopalian, and when in Mariona she went at Easter and Christmas to the ivy-clad, stone Gothic church that stood in the shadow of the monument. Rodney Merriam attended no church. When asked as to his religion he always said he was a Roman Catholic, and as he and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Mariona dined together now and then, there were people in town who really believed that Merriam was a Roman communicant.
After another hymn and a benediction the meeting closed. The minister shook hands with Zelda and expressed his pleasure at seeing her; a number of others spoke to her. Some of them looked at her curiously, seeing on their own ground a young woman who was much talked about, and whom they might not have an opportunity of meeting in any other way. The minister’s wife, a bright-faced young woman, introduced herself to Zelda.
“It’s a joy to see a new face at prayer meeting,” she said. “It seems to be an institution for the tried and faithful. I admit that I never went until I was married.”
“I think I shall come often,” Zelda replied passively.
The pastor’s wife was very pretty. She had just come to town from another city, and her fall street-gown was of a fresh and bride-like quality.
“You are the one that sings?” said Mrs. Martin. “I’m just beginning to get acquainted here; but I’ve heard that about you.”
“I’m one of a million amateurs—that’s all,” replied Zelda.
She walked home with her father, who talked chiefly of the church and its work and the fine promise of the young minister. Zelda said little. Her father was inexplicable to her; but he had begun to fascinate her curiously. She had always accepted the relationships of life as a matter of course. Decency, order, fidelity, were all essential to the ordinary trend of life. “Honor thy father and thy mother” was a commonplace; but to-night she challenged it, as she walked home from prayer meeting by the side of Ezra Dameron. And after she had gone to her room, she wondered about him and saw and heard him again petitioning Heaven. If it had not been for her mother’s testimony she could have believed in him.