He was in the front row at the church; he could see his friend’s face in the open coffin. All of Ishuah’s meanness and fussiness and care was wiped out; there was only the dumb nobility with which he had faced blizzard and August heat, labor and sorrow; only the heroic thing Whittlesey had loved in him.
And he would not see Ishuah again, ever.
He listened to Elmer, who, his eyes almost filled at the drama of the church full of people mourning their old friend, lulled them with Revelation’s triumphant song:
These are they that come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God; and they serve him day and night in his temple; and he that sitteth on the throne shall spread his tabernacle over them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun strike upon them, nor any heat; for the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life: and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes.
They sang, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” and Elmer led the singing, while old Whittlesey tried to pipe up with them.
They filed past the coffin. When Whittlesey had this last moment’s glimpse of Ishuah’s sunken face, his dry eyes were blind, and he staggered.
Elmer caught him with his great arms, and whispered, “He has gone to his glory, to his great reward! Don’t let’s sorrow for him!”
In Elmer’s confident strength old Whittlesey found reassurance. He clung to him, muttering, “God bless you, Brother,” before he hobbled out.
VIII
“You were wonderful at the funeral today! I’ve never seen you so sure of immortality,” worshiped Cleo, as they walked home.
“Yuh, but they don’t appreciate it—not even when I said about how this old fellow was a sure-enough hero. We got to get on to some burg where I’ll have a chance.”
“Don’t you think God’s in Banjo Crossing as much as in a city?”
“Oh, now, Cleo, don’t go and get religious on me! You simply can’t understand how it takes it out of a fellow to do a funeral right and send ’em all home solaced. You may find God here, but you don’t find the salaries!”
He was not angry with Cleo now, nor bullying. In these two months he had become indifferent to her; indifferent enough to stop hating her and to admire her conduct of the Sunday School, her tactful handling of the good sisters of the church when they came snooping to the parsonage.
“I think I’ll take a little walk,” he muttered when they reached home.
He came to the Widow Clark’s house, where he had lived as bachelor.
Jane was out in the yard, the March breeze molding her skirt about her; rosy face darker and eyes more soft as she saw the pastor hailing her, magnificently raising his hat.
She fluttered toward him.
“You folks ever miss me? Guess you’re glad to get rid of the poor old preacher that was always cluttering up the house!”
“We miss you awfully!”
He felt his whole body yearning toward her. Hurriedly he left her and wished he hadn’t left her, and hastened to get himself far from the danger to his respectability. He hated Cleo again now, in an injured, puzzled way.
“I think I’ll sneak up to Sparta this week,” he fumed, then: “No! Conference coming in ten days; can’t take any chances till after that.”
IX
The Annual Conference, held in Sparta, late in March. The high time of the year, when the Methodist preachers of half a dozen districts met together for prayer and rejoicing, to hear of the progress of the Kingdom and incidentally to learn whether they were to have better jobs this coming year.
The bishop presiding—Wesley R. Toomis, himself—with his district superintendents, grave and bustling.
The preachers, trying to look as though prospective higher salaries were unworthy their attention.
Between meetings they milled about in the large auditorium of the Preston Memorial Methodist Church: visiting laymen and nearly three hundred ministers.
Veteran country parsons, whiskered and spectacled, rusty-coated and stooped, still serving two country churches, or three or four; driving their fifty miles a week; content for reading with the Scriptures and the weekly Advocate.
New-fledged country preachers, their large hands still calloused from plow-handle and reins, content for learning with two years of high school, content with the Old Testament for history and geology.
The preachers of the larger towns; most of them hard to recognize as clerics, in their neat business suits and modest four-in-hands; frightfully cordial one to another; perhaps a quarter of them known as modernists and given to reading popular manuals of biology and psychology; the other three-quarters still devoted to banging the pulpit apropos of Genesis.
But moving through these masses, easily noticeable, the inevitable successes: the district superintendents, the pastors of large city congregations, the conceivable candidates for college presidencies, mission-boards, boards of publication, bishoprics.
They were not all of them leonine and actor-like, these staff officers. No few were gaunt, or small, wiry, spectacled, and earnest; but they were all admirable politicians, long in memory of names, quick to find flattering answers. They believed that the Lord rules everything, but that it was only friendly to help him out; and that the enrollment of political allies helped almost as much as prayer in becoming known as suitable material for lucrative pastorates.
Among these leaders were the Savonarolas, gloomy fellows, viewing the progress of machine civilization with biliousness; capable of drawing thousands of auditors by their spicy but chaste denunciations of burglary, dancing, and show-windows filled with lingerie.
Then the renowned liberals, preachers who filled city tabernacles or churches in university towns by showing that skipping whatever seemed unreasonable in the Bible did not interfere
