I was not passed out, just asleep.” He arose and moved toward her. “I still want to know where you’ve been.”
“I told you in the note. I went to make my meditation.”
“And it took you five hours. I knew you were getting very holy, but I didn’t know that like Paul you had been ‘rapt up to the third heaven.’”
“Why do you always have to put down anything that you don’t understand? You know that I’ve been receiving instruction in meditative technique from Sebastian. We were talking about it afterwards. He says that I am making phenomenal progress.” Her face tilted up, her blue eyes glistening and looking into space. With the blue highlights gleaming in her black hair, she looked as beautiful as she had when she was crowned at the state fair competition.
“What does that creep know about it?”
“You’re jealous. All you husbands are. You can’t stand the idea that there is one student here who is going to be a real spiritual leader. I don’t know why he is here; he already knows more about spirituality than any of the faculty. He hasn’t merely studied Christian asceticism—he is deep into the meditative techniques used by ancient cultures all over the world. He has advanced beyond the petty confines of Christianity into the real spirituality that lies behind all religions.” She stalked into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.
Seth continued to talk through the door. “You know what the other students call him? ‘The Little Bastian.’ Nobody can stand him. Even those peaceniks hate him, and they are supposed to love everybody. If you want to know my opinion, the guy is crazy. And probably queer as well. Did you ever notice the way that he walks?”
Emerging from the lighted bathroom into the unlit bedroom, Sheila stood framed in the doorway. Her model’s stance with pelvis thrust forward was backlit, and the shortie nightgown she wore hardly hid her shape. There could be no doubt why she had won swimsuit at national.
“I’m glad one of the men around here is not carnal. The rest of you are a bunch of animals. All of you look at me as if I were naked. Sebastian says that sex is disruptive of the spiritual life.”
With this she went to the bed, pulled back the covers, climbed onto her side, and, facing the edge, she pulled the covers around her neck. “I have to work tomorrow, so I can’t lose sleep by arguing with you all night. Please don’t read in bed—it keeps me awake. Goodnight.”
The next morning between classes Canon Bothwell stopped in the office and told the Dean’s secretary that he would like to examine the folder of one of the Juniors, Sebastian Seymour. Unlocking the file cabinet and removing a folder, she said, “Here’s Mr. Seymour’s file. You will find it all here except the psychological, Dr. Bothwell. The Diocese requires us to return that as soon as the Dean has read it.”
“I understand, Mrs. Simmes. I’m sure the time will come when the law is much stricter about student files in every way. I only look at one when I have a real need to know something about the student. May I sit at this table while I look through this?”
Sorting through the documents, Bothwell saw that Sebastian was older than he thought, having spent about five years between his graduation from Butler and his arrival at the seminary. He had grown up in the Indiana town of Lebanon, in a working-class family, discovering a larger world in high school, where he was active in dramatics and debate and had been a cheerleader. He had attended Butler on a scholarship, and his grades there had been fairly good. His Graduate Record Exam score was higher than Bothwell had expected. His main activities were in theatre, but he was also active in a campus group sponsored by a church in the ghetto. That congregation was connected with a mainline denomination but was almost completely identified with its intense pastor, Bob Smith. Bothwell knew Smith himself had grown up in Indianapolis’ inner city in one of its poor white sections, and he completed college and seminary by taking jobs on the night shift and finding every scholarship available for ministerial students. Smith’s combination of ecstatic experience with social action was not typical of the denomination with which his congregation maintained a tenuous identification, and from which it received a good bit of financial aid.
Smith’s church had carried on an aggressive recruitment program on the campus, looking especially for the excluded and the alienated among the student body. The combination of tongue speaking and association with blacks was enough to give a sense that, even though one was excluded from the social life on campus, those who belonged to the fraternities and sororities were the ones who were really left out. This group offered a natural sphere in which Seymour could develop his flair for leadership, and by the time he graduated he had established himself as Smith’s right-hand man. After several years something must have happened to sour the relationship, because Sebastian had dissociated himself from the congregation. He set himself up in the neighborhood as an unofficial social work agent, and after a few months had started to attend the small Episcopal mission nearby. Smith had returned the seminary’s reference form with a scrawl across it that said, “If he had been one of us, he would not have gone out from us. We turn him over to Satan.”
Sebastian had soon made himself invaluable to St. Cyprian’s mission. He became choir director and, having mastered the liturgy in a few months, a lay reader and director of acolytes. In January he was elected to the Mission Council, and by spring he was recommended as a postulant. All this information was from his autobiographical statement and references from members of the congregation. The documents also revealed that he had been approved over the opposition of the Rector of All Saints, from whose parish most of the social agencies in the Diocese operated, and who was the Episcopalian with the most credibility among the city’s blacks.
After his eleven o’clock class Canon Bothwell was descending the steps in front of the School when he heard a pleasant feminine voice call, “Rod, wait up, and I’ll let you walk a lady home.” Turning around, he saw with satisfaction that he had been hailed by Chase’s newest and only female faculty member, Angela Price-Mansfield. Her being hired surprised everyone, but from the entire group of candidates she was the best qualified in quite a strong field. Her dissertation at Duke showing the superficiality of Situation Ethics had been accepted for publication by Westminster without revision. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of her selection, however, was her acceptance of Chase’s invitation, since she had a number of more attractive offers. But her husband Tony had been offered a job teaching Renaissance history at Wabash, and the package deal seemed to extend to the two of them more of the opportunities they were seeking, so Chase was able to hire above itself. Since the pay package at Chase was figured on the formula for clergy and included housing, while Wabash had only a few houses that it could make available to faculty at below-market rent, the Price-Mansfields lived at the seminary and were Roderick Bothwell’s next-door neighbors.
“An honor and a pleasure, ma’am.” Bothwell’s formal gallantry was partly facetious because he had already come to have a great deal of affection and respect for his attractive young colleague; but it also came naturally to one whose youth had been spent in the South four decades before, and who had never been married.
“I don’t know that I would have realized it was a lady I was waiting for, with your cloak so much like those the rest of us wear around here. I suspect, however, that it is we who have appropriated feminine fashions rather that you who have borrowed ours.”
“Cloaks are the only outer garment the fashion designers have come up with that can cover the multitude of hem lines they have left us to choose among,” she replied, falling in step beside him. The top of her head came only to the height of his earlobe, although Bothwell was of average height. Her face was narrow, but in profile her lightly made-up features were chiseled gracefully enough to have adorned a cameo.
“Still, they do come in handy for protecting books and papers from the weather when
