The Order of Morning Prayer

IT was eleven o’clock when Mother and Thomas and Sister hurried up the steps and into the church. The bell was tolling, and the town-clock was striking. The two jangled together high above the quiet street. The organist, was late. She walked up the aisle very quickly, on her little high-heeled shoes. She slipped her plump bare arms out of her coat and took her place at the organ, just as Mother knelt on the hassock in her pew and bowed her head.

Mother tried to recall what most needed her prayer. She shook off the details of her household, which had reached elastic arms and little hooked ends after her, and had kept pulling her up, all the way down the street. There was a child sick in the village. Heaven send angels to help him and help his mother. There was a prayer of thankfulness and humility that her children were well. She started to rise; but wait, there was another prayer. God send pain to all doctors. Let them suffer pain that they may truly know what it is. She rose from her knees.

Little Sister who had knelt in sweet imitation of Mother, now shot a glance out of the corner of her eye, and seeing that Mother had raised her head, proceeded to raise her own fat self from the hassock to the seat of the pew. It was uncushioned, and Sister was much occupied in finding herself a comfortable position. The organ pealed out the hymn, and Thomas found the place in the beautiful new prayer-book his godmother had given him. They were all standing, and Sister stepped up on the hassock, slipped off it, and her little feet made a clatter. She giggled out loud. Thomas frowned and looked at his mother. Mother smiled at Thomas and smiled at Sister. Their pew was the very last one in the church, and they were behind everybody else.

Two girls came in and went into the second seat in front. They had hurried and had been blown about in the wind. One of them was soft and plump, and her hair had been curled with a curlingiron. The wind had blown out a few straight locks which mixed oddly with the fluffy ones. They lay round her ears in little tails.

At the opposite end of their pew sat Mrs. Hammond. Mother did not know her, but knew she came from Dummer. She wore a hat with a big bunch of cherries on it, and a veil that had got caught on the stem of a cherry and did not lie quite straight. Her coat had two fat wrinkles over the shoulders, and the skirts to it were crumpled. She had come to church squeezed into a buggy beside her sun-browned son. Mother looked at the cherries and could see the hills of Dummer. A white farmhouse standing back from the road, in a prosperous lawn; another farm-house near, on another hill — like Rome, Dummer was built on seven hills. All round the hamlet was the June embroidery of incredibly thick foliage, and grass and daisies and late buttercups; and among the orchards were trees crimson with cherries. The air was keen from the hill-winds and sweet with hay fields.

The rector’s voice began, ‘Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.’ Mother glanced quickly at the altar. There was no display of Communion silver or linen. The Order for Daily Morning Prayer was so much more simple for Thomas, who was just learning to find the places in his prayerbook. Communion Sunday was always such a bewilderment to him. But Mother could not remember to tell him, before they came to church, about the Sentences of Scripture, and whenever she tried to show him, the rector read so fast that Thomas could not follow, with Ids deliberate little mind. But with ‘Dearly Beloved Brethren’ the frown on the forehead of Thomas disappeared. From that point it was plain sailing.

While the choir was singing the Te Deum a young man and woman and a little boy came into the next pew. They were good Episcopalians. They uttered the responses in the tones of people to whom the responses had become a habit. All but the little boy: he sat leaning against his mother’s arm; and he kept his head turned to gaze at Sister. Sister gazed back. The little boy’s mother kept trying to turn his head to look at the rector. She had a face with no softness in it. Her cheeks were straight instead of round, and her mouth was a straight line. She looked young and healthy, and very energetic. She gave up trying to turn the little boy’s head. She lifted him and placed him on her other side, so that she could, with herself, shut off his view of Sister’s rosy face in its frame of lace and ribbons. The little boy’s father reached out an arm and snuggled the little boy up to him. He was a very tall thin man. His hair was getting gray at the temples. His mouth was very clear-cut and smiling, and he smiled down at the little boy, and his long fingers patted the little white blouse ever so softly. He had several horizontal lines on his forehead. The boy was thin, and he breathed with his mouth open. His eyes were too big. They were brown and had thick curling lashes. Mother looked away, up to the stained-glass window. She was thinking, ‘I wish they would make him eat more bread and butter, and let him eat more sugar.’

Nearer the chancel sat a woman who wore a large white hat. She sat up very straight and the light, from the window near her, fell on her lovely gray hair — gray hair whitening at the ends, and shading in the shadows to the darkest gray. Here it blended into the facing of her hat which was dark velvet, curving up and away from her head, and her pretty little sea-shell ears. Along the front and side lay folds of white satin, also catching the light, creased and crumpled into the right size and shape to turn the head and hat into a delightful composition of light and shade. Except for that one, the church was full of freak hats. Right in front of Mother was one on a tall girl. It was black, and its crown was completely round like a man’s derby. It was pushed down flat on the girl’s head, and there was not a spear of decoration, nor anything in front to turn it into a composition. At the back a bunch of aigrettes was perched on it like a feather-duster. The brim lay on the girl’s shoulders. You could not see her hair. She looked shapeless and like a scarecrow.

‘ Finally we commend to thy fatherly goodness all those who are any ways afflicted or distressed in mind, body, or estate.’ Mother’s thoughts flew guiltily away from hats and out over the world. She looked down at the little boy. She did not like to think of their taking him to the hospital, to be hurt and frightened and, perhaps, not helped after all; and she did not like to think of their not taking him if he needed to go, if his little life was one long struggle for air, just the plain gratuitous air that we breathe without a thought.

The organ burst forth into Ancient of Days. It drove sleep from the eyes of Sister, who sat upright, listening intently. Thomas found the place and they all stood, but did not sing; everybody listened to the choir. One girl, who usually sang in the choir, to-day sat down in the congregation. With her was a very young man. He was tall and his hair was very red. When he turned you could see his honest largefeatured face. His cheeks were pink; so was his neck. The girl wore a ridiculous hat, and a close-fitting dress of oyster-white linen. ‘She might just as well be in her night-gown,’ said Mother to herself. ‘ In fact our night-gowns are much more modest than our dresses, nowadays.’

They sat down. The rector read his text. Thomas gave his mother a push, and held his book toward her. ‘ Where’s this, mother? ’ he said in a loud whisper. ‘ This is the sermon, Thomas,’ she answered, in another loud whisper. Thomas blushed, but nobody except Mother saw him. Mother put her attention on the sermon. The first sentence she heard was: ‘If ever you are oppressed by the thought of the sin and suffering in the world’—‘Oh,’ thought Mother, ‘perhaps I am going to be helped.’ She was always looking for help. But the rector went on and Mother’s interest flagged. What he was saying was just what other clergymen had said, just what you were always coming across in the Bible. Mother had no key to it.

The elastic bands that she had caused to withdraw now placed their hooked ends in her consciousness. She almost jumped as she remembered that she had meant to go into the kitchen and push in the oven damper. She had forgotten it. ‘The chicken won’t bake,’ she thought. Then she went over the dinner. Mashed potatoes, roast chicken, creamed asparagus, radishes, and lettuce from the garden. It was headlettuce, and she had sown the seed and watered it, and tended it, and transplanted it. Each little limpsy weakling plant she had nursed, giving it water by night, and covering it from the sun by day. And now it was ready to eat. It seemed incredible that the great cabbage-like plants could be the limp seedlings she had worked over for weeks. Then she thought an apology to the rector for her inattention, and resolved to listen to the rest of the sermon.

The rector had a strong, good face, with one weakness in it. Speaking to him face to face, it was not noticeable, but seen the length of the church, as one visualizes in painting, there was a perpendicular line on one side of his face, from his nose, across the end of his mouth, running into the side of his chin. It gave the odd appearance of a sneering grimace, as he looked out over his congregation. Presently he was saying, ‘Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father which is in heaven.’ Thomas extricated his ten-cent piece from between the covers of his prayer-book and hymn-book. Sister fidgeted for fear the plate would pass too quickly for her to get her penny in.

One of the wardens came down the aisle. He was strikingly handsome. It seemed as if heaven, giving him such physical perfection, might have added a few spiritual gifts. His presence could not but suggest the scandal that was associated with his name. He held the plate patiently for Sister, while she plumped in her penny and looked up at him for approval. He smiled at her as tenderly and charmingly as an honest, clean-minded man might have done. Mother looked at the stained-glass windows, a pang at her heart for ‘such long years’ before her tiny girl. ‘And I may not be here to take care of her.’ Thomas looked at her quickly, as if his heart had heard her thought. ‘Thomas will take care of her,’ was her sudden comfort.

At last came: ‘The Peace of God which passeth all understanding.’ Mother had seen it in faces, and felt it on sweet summer mornings. If it were not true, how could that beautiful sentence have been perpetuated in the liturgy, how could it have been said in the beginning? And so, when she knelt for her last prayer, she thanked God for every loving father and mother. She thanked God for doctors to help the children to breathe — ‘ but God send the doctors pain,’ she added as an interlude. She thanked him for the beauty of the world, whether of hats or the hills of Dummer, and for headlettuce, and for the Great Church, and for the rector’s voice, speaking of the Peace of God. As to ugliness, whether of hats or faces, and unloving mothers, and bad men, they made her heart ache, but patience was also in her heart, and, at her elbow, as always, hope.