In the Beauty of the Lilies Read Online Free PDF

book,
The Trimmed Lamp
, by the author O. Henry, who had died a few weeks ago, at an age only a few years more advanced than Clarence’s was now. Piqued by its Biblical allusion, the clergyman attempted to read the title story, which concerned two young city shop-girls with a man, Dan, between them, but before he could arrive at the twist and moral at the end dozed off in the arms of … nothingness.
    The heat of the day relented with a forerunner of the evening breeze, which gently scraped the window shade against its frame. In his dreams, he seemed to be trying to fix a lock on his bedroom door, lest one of his children barge in upon his and Stella’s privacy. But the lock grew large and clumsy beneath his hands, curved and wooden to the touch, like an old ox yoke shaped by visible chisel-marks or like an axle to adjust or grease which he had perilously crowded himself beneath a heavy wagon’s underside. The great iron-tired wheel near his head creaked to turn, and he awoke with a start. There were brittle, chuckling noises from the dining room; the women had started to set the table. His mouth was parched; he wondered if he had been snoring. The now-crustywound of faithlessness was still there in his consciousness, like a muddy shirt allowed to dry where it had been tossed.
There is no God
. Croakily, Clarence ventured his first utterance aloud for these three hours. “Have mercy,” he whispered, smiling at the futile sound of it, his voice scratching at the air like a dog begging to be let in at the screen door.
    “Mr. Dearholt, would you like to favor us by saying grace?”
    The oval glasses, the confident broad false teeth, flashed. Dearholt had a voice preeningly rich and rounded, rebounding off the cavernous wet walls of his mouth. He often left his mouth half-open after an utterance, as if a delightful addendum might instantly set it in motion again. He responded, “Reverend Wilmot, I would never dare presume to do so at the table of a man of the cloth.”
    Dare:
Did Clarence imagine a glint of danger there? Dearholt was the owner of a small mill—thirty employees, a dozen looms—and an expert in spotting weakness in both machines and operators. Clarence’s suggestion bordered on the eccentric, though he hoped it might pass for elaborate courtesy and habitual modesty. He had now a secret—God’s non-being—to protect. He bowed his head beneath the leaden silence above them, the rectangle of twelve downcast faces in the sickly yellow light of the scallop-edged Tiffany chandelier, and reached upward with his oddly roughened voice, which sounded fragile and muffled in his own ears. “Heavenly Father,” he began, blankly, and found in his practiced lexicon of sacred usage further words: “In these troubled times instruct us in Thine activating covenant and loving mercies so that we may render back unto Thee a worthy portion of the blessings which Thou bestowest, even to this meal and the fellowshipof our gathered company. We dare lift our voices in petition not through any merit of our own but by virtue of the gracious intercession of Thine only Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
    “Amen,” Dearholt loudly said, as if driving an extra nail into a shaky construction.
    Yet, that awkward duty discharged through a dryness like chalk powder in his mouth, Clarence found he had a fair appetite. The sweet ham with its congenial tang of cider vinegar, the steaming bowls of vegetables glazed with melting butter and sugar in Stella’s rich Southern style, the three sorts of potatoes—mashed, boiled, and “Dutch” fried—and the long suspended field of glittering silver and glasses seemed to bid him live at his own wake. Present at the meal, while pale little Mavis hesitantly served, were his wife and three children, Jared, Esther, and Theodore; Mr. and Mrs. Dearholt; Mr. and Mrs. McDermott, he also of the Building Requirements Committee; Mrs. Caravello, with her two dark-eyed, dark-browed teen-aged