The Main Chance

by Meredith Nicholson

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.