Runagates in Scarceness
A Holy Mystery
O. C. Edwards Jr.
Runagates in Scarceness
A Holy Mystery
Copyright © 2013 O. C. Edwards Jr.. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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isbn 13: 978-1-62564-359-9
eisbn 13: 978-1-63087-084-3
Manufactured in the USA
Dedicated to My Former Students Who Have Taught Me So Much
Preface
This novel was written in 1980 and revised slightly for this edition. Thus it displays attitudes common for its time and for the period in which the story is set, some of which have changed markedly in the years since, e.g., those toward homosexuality. To alter these would make them anachronistic so they have been left intact, but they should not be taken as indicative of my stance today.
The resuscitation of the manuscript owes a great deal to a number of persons whose names will not be given for fear of omitting some and slighting persons to whom I am deeply grateful. It is hoped that they all know who they are and will feel acknowledged by this statement. The two exceptions I will make to this anonymity are my copyeditor Lorrie Cooper and my wife Jane, who has put up with me for fifty-six years and supported me in all my endeavors. I am afraid she is guilty of enabling.
1
While the bell was calling the community to prayer, Canon Bothwell vested to officiate at Evensong. Over his cassock and surplice he adjusted his academic hood and pulled his black scarf over his head, checking the mirror to make sure its ends hung down evenly in front. Though the full-length mirror in the vesting room had been losing mercury off its back for most of the hundred thirty years since the seminary was founded, and its reflective surface was, as usual, further diminished by a layer of dust on its surface, it nevertheless returned enough of an image for Bothwell to be amused by the memory of overhearing a student describe his appearance as that of a plump icon. His hair did indeed recede over a forehead that bulged as though (they had said) his skull had difficulty in containing his brain. Even the un-Byzantine tortoiseshell of his owlish glasses contributed to the overall numinous effect, and his goatee and moustache could have been modeled on those of St. John Chrysostom. Only the protuberance of the well-bred paunch billowing his surplice conflicted with the gaunt image of Eastern asceticism. A mere flick of his preaching tabs was all that remained to render him decently habited to officiate at the evening service.
Leaving the oily smell of the dark oak vestment cases and making his way across floors worn uneven by generations of student feet, he left the sacristy and entered the place of worship. Passing alongside the altar area, he went behind the long choir where the student body members faced each another across the central aisle and then turned to walk between the shallow nave where visitors sat (called “the court of the gentiles”) and the back of the stalls facing the altar. That row of stalls seated the faculty, who maintained their surveillance to ensure that all was done “decently and in order.”
Reverencing the altar, he settled on his knees in the Sub-dean’s stall, assuring himself by a quick check that his Prayer Book, hymnal, and psalter were marked at the proper places. Then he buried his head in his hands, using the “shampoo position” favored by many Anglicans as the appropriate posture for addressing their God. The act of vesting had helped release him from the wandering and repetitious discussions of the afternoon’s faculty meeting, so his devotions now were not so much explicit instructions to the Deity as returning awareness of the Presence in which he and all creatures always dwell.
The student organist in the loft finally completed the prelude, a showy piece chiefly notable for its variations in volume and tempo. Bothwell’s recitation of the opening words of the evening office managed to restore the mood of recollection that had been blasted by the organ’s blare. After twenty-two years at Chase Clergy Training College (this archaic British designation being one of a number of his affectations that the founder had imposed on the institution), the Canon knew all the words of the Prayer Book’s sixteenth-century translation of the Psalms and the tones to which they were set. This knowledge freed him to relax in his seat while chanting with the community and at the same time safely glance around the chapel without endangering the flow of plainsong from his lips.
When in the 1830s Bishop Philander Chase became disgruntled with Kenyon and Bexley Hall, the college and seminary he had founded in Ohio, he had returned to his English friends to seek funds for erecting in the wilderness of Indiana yet another school for the prophets. This chapel was the first fruits of those efforts. In accord with the tastes of its ducal donor, the building was chaste Georgian. Large windows with rounded tops and clear glass panes let in what remained of the winter evening light, fading light that had its life prolonged and sustained for a moment longer by the white paint covering the wainscoting and the gated period pews that boxed in their inhabitants. Even the triple-decker pulpit of the period had been retained, as had also the tablets above the holy table setting forth the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer.
Large brass chandeliers with more arms than octopi held aloft candles, although they were now fake and wired. The only ripple in this serene pond of Georgian order was an immense brass sanctuary lamp that hung from the ceiling on a long chain, the gift of a turn-of-the-century patron who often raided Europe for pious objects with which to ornament and edify the seminary. The Gothic exuberance of both its design and devotional style was foreign in this locale of good taste and restraint, and the rest of the building seemed to hold aloof from it in a typically British response to a foreigner. Since the sacrament was not reserved at Chase anyway, the flickering light was frustrated in its efforts to pay tribute to the Eucharistic presence of Christ.
The chanting community had already expressed in the words of the sixty-eighth Psalm its willingness to let God arise and his enemies be scattered, when Canon Bothwell had his attention distracted from an inspection of the student body by a phrase from the sixth verse, glorious in its archaic verbiage: “letteth the runagates continue in scarceness.” Would those who were busy revising the Book of Common Prayer merely update runagates into renegades, or did the Hebrew mean something else? At any rate, renegades were pretty scarce around there, although Bothwell thought he had heard once that Chase’s Wisconsin rival, Nashotah House, had been used as a hideout by a Chicago gangster during Prohibition. Nothing so exotic had ever happened at Chase. He had long since lost his naiveté about seminarians and knew they had most of the weaknesses of non-seminarians, but usually these foibles did not manifest themselves so dramatically and publicly. Runagates were scarce at the Clergy Training College.
Later, after he had unvested, Bothwell walked down the sidewalk connecting the sacristy with the arched walkway between the chapel and the Green Building. The chapel windows were dark now, except for the small
