As they were finishing the meal, Ellie said to Cecilia, “Honey, the folks want you to play the organ for our Thanksgiving service tomorrow morning. I forgot to mention it last evening. You can do that for them, can’t you? Mrs. Myrholm said she’d like a break for one day.”
“Sure.”
“They’d like you to play one of those new preludes you’ve learned at college. Just to see if their investment in you is paying off,” she added with a twinkle.
Cecilia blushed and looked over at Steve who looked puzzled. She had not told him about her financial support from the congregation.
Ellie picked up on this and explained the arrangement to Steve. A lump formed in his throat. He looked at his Cecilia and shook his head slowly.
“Why don’t you and Steve walk over to church this afternoon and practice?” Ellie suggested. “The choir is going to sing the Harvest-Home song for their anthem and they’re going to come early to run through it with you in the morning.”
And so Cecilia and Steve spent the rest of the day by themselves in the church. It was a large frame structure that seated over three hundred worshippers on the main floor, and another fifty in the choir loft. Well-nigh everyone in town belonged to the church, and farmers for miles around also claimed it as their spiritual home. Pastor Endsrud conducted two worship services every Sunday morning during his twenty-six years in Meadowville, separated by a Sunday school hour for children and adults.
Within the sanctuary all was at rest. Steve was very content just to sit in one of the pews in the choir loft close to the organ and soak it all in—the holiness of the chancel with its life-size altarpiece depicting the Good Shepherd bearing a lost lamb home, the intricately wrought Communion Rail forming a half-circle around the altar itself where the faithful knelt to receive the Body and Blood of their Saviour, the elevated pulpit from which sounded forth the Word of God for all to hear, the structure of the nave with its vaulted ceiling which could not have been the work of an amateur, but most of all the glorious music pouring out relentlessly, now loud, now a mere whisper, from the hidden pipe chamber at the touch of his beloved’s fingers and feet. For a long time he sat there staring at her graceful and strong movements over the keys and the pedals. At length, he could not help himself any longer. He got up, slipped around behind her on the organ bench, and enlaced her chest in his arms, breathing so hard she could feel it all the way to her toes. The music stopped. She tilted her head back. He tilted his forward and swung himself onto the bench beside her, facing backwards. She leaned into his arms. And they kissed and hung on to each other like that for what seemed like an eternity, eventually relaxing and letting each other get back to what they had been doing before, sort of. Not a word was said.
Happening in this Holy Place and in these holy circumstances, this lengthy embrace was almost the equivalent of marriage vows for them. That’s how both of them described it to me separately the following week with not a trace of embarrassment.
This organ console was home to Cecilia. Mrs. Myrholm had given her lessons on it since she was eight years old. She knew the stain on each of its yellowed keys, the tone behind each of its plunger stops. It did not take her fingers long to accustom themselves once again to the stiff tracker action: each range of pipes was manually operated from the keyboard which had to be fastened to the side of the pipe chamber. After electricity came to town, you no longer needed to have somebody sitting behind the chamber to pump the bellows with his feet whenever you wanted to play it. An organist had to have powerful hands to last through an entire service. But Cecilia loved the old organ and affectionately compared the quality of the sounds produced by its pipes to those of the latest models back at Christiania.
Towards evening they left the church and skirted around the edge of town so they could stroll hand in hand without stirring up gossip.
The evening was spent quietly around the fireplace in the living room. A cold early winter wind was whining outside, but inside all was peaceful. The day had been so busy, but now serenity reigned in the Endsrud home. The pastor was sitting in his favorite easy chair to the right of the hearth. Ellie was in another chair to the left. And on the rug in front of the hearth Steve and Cecilia were sitting beside, or rather, discreetly interlocked with one another.
“If you weren’t here, Mom and Dad would be sitting over there with their arms around each other,” Cecilia said into Steve’s ear just loud enough for all to hear, pointing to the love seat behind them directly facing the hearth. The pastor winked at Steve and nodded, and everyone had a good laugh.
Taken as a whole, this end-of-the day ritual broke entirely new ground in Steve’s heart. He’d never experienced anything like it. The conversation ambled along dealing with things some people would call trifles—a new baby in the parish, the Thanksgiving Communion Service in the morning, the illness or the recovery of a friend, the sick calf in quarantine out in the barn, and such like.
At about 9:30 the family got out three well-worn hymnals from the bookcase and sang hymns. Steve’s voice blended well with the rolling tones of the pastor and his wife and the full chords Cecilia struck on the piano. Nobody needed to tell him that his spirit was also beginning to blend with theirs effortlessly in a marvelous way. Then Pastor Endsrud opened the big family Bible and read the appointed passage for the day from St. Mark’s Gospel about the Sower and the Seed. Cecilia looked up at Steve and he looked down at her, and she knew in that moment beyond a shadow of a doubt that his heart was fertile soil where the seed was taking root.
A family prayer followed, simple, direct, and not very long. Each one offered to the Lord what was on his or her heart. First the pastor, then Ellie, then Cecilia, and then it was Steve’s turn. He didn’t hesitate for a moment.
“My dear dear God. I love you so much. I love Pastor Endsrud. I love Ellie. And I love my Cecilia to the bursting point. Thank You, thank You, thank You!”
His voice cracked. That was all he could say. Pastor Endsrud intervened, “Our Father who art in Heaven….”
And everyone went off to bed, reminding each other that tomorrow would be a big day.
Could it be any bigger than today has been? Steve asked himself as he mounted the staircase to his bedroom.
XXXVI
Stalks of corn, chubby pumpkins, shocks of grain, knobby squashes along with many other fruits of the rich Minnesota soil flanked the altar and sentineled the pews of the Meadowville Lutheran Church the next morning. Bulging ears of golden corn adorned the altar rail and hung from the windowsills up and down the side aisles. The matured products of God’s providence and man’s patient toil were assembled here in prodigious array, and the festive hearts of the people were ready to render thanks for what they of themselves could never have wrought.
Steve had insisted that Cecilia’s “patrons” would surely respond to her rendering of Bach’s “Fantasia and Fugue in C Minor.” And respond they did! The church was full to the brim fifteen minutes before the service was scheduled to begin. I have heard this work performed many times over the years, but never with the passion and lyricism with which Cecilia invested the Fantasia or with the energy and drama with which she flew through the Fugue, even on that tracker organ. The power in her hands must have been prodigious. When she was done there was dead silence in the church, silence which reigned until the service began. Steve told me that people were almost too astonished to breathe by what they had just heard. But when it came time to sing the first hymn, they raised the roof.
The service itself was elevating, unpretentious, and replete with gratitude to God, not only for the good harvest and its attendant blessings but also for the safe return from the war of several young men in the parish. Worshippers went home mindful of the responsibility incumbent upon them to share their abundance with others and in that way they would be feasting today in the aura of the law of love.
Back in the parsonage after church, Ellie and Cecilia scurried about in the kitchen to prepare for the guests due to arrive on
foot at noon. The pastor and Steve were ordered to relax in the living room where they would not be underfoot. Luscious aromas from the belabored cast-iron stove wafted throughout the house, bearing promise of the banquet to come.
At five minutes to twelve there was a timid knock at the front door. Pastor got up and opened it. In trotted the thirteen Wilsons—father, mother, and eleven children ranging from four months to fourteen years of age. Steve did a double-take. Immediately the Endsruds swung into action.
First Cecilia and Mrs. Wilson exchanged places on the spot, the former descending into the swarming brood of children, the latter escaping into the kitchen. Next Pastor Endsrud shed his normally reserved demeanor and became positively aggressive—teasing, poking, and playing all at once. Steve watched the smaller children jump up and down beside Cecilia and the pastor, impatient for their turn to be tossed in the air or tickled in the tummy or just plain hugged. By some miracle they managed to relate to Mr. Wilson and the older children at the same time, encouraging them not to try to keep the littler ones in line and make them “behave themselves.” They were all welcome just as they were. Steve now understood why Ellie had thoughtfully removed anything of value that playful kids might harm. The house was virtually kid-proofed!
Soon Steve was sucked into the rollicking maelstrom. The look of pride in Cecilia’s shining eyes when they stole a glance at one another as he was kneeling on the carpet tussling with two giggling kids said everything. It did not actually require much resourcefulness to amuse these children, he discovered, just a lot of energy. Snatch up one and toss him in the air, push another one down and tickle her in the ribs, listen thoughtfully to the carefully chosen words of a quiet one while balancing a rowdy one on your shoulders. And, by chiggers, it really was fun! If this little feller was getting out of hand, just shove him at Cecilia and see what she could do with him!
Throughout this chaos the Endsruds remained unruffled and gracious. And the happiness of the Wilsons, especially the father and mother, broke out in a hundred little ways all afternoon.
The banquet was abundant and tasty. It was obvious to Steve that the Endsruds were enjoying it much more by sharing it with the Wilsons than if they had kept it all for themselves. His mind was formulating this into some kind of principle when a little rascal interrupted his thoughts by ducking under the table and pulling his shoelace loose!
When at last evening came and the Wilsons went home laden with “leftovers that will never keep,” the Endsruds—of whom Steve by this time felt very much a part—were weary but happy. Slowly and warmly they set about righting the house again. But when the clock struck nine, Pastor called a halt to their labors and, gathering them around the piano, played a few Thanksgiving hymns while everyone sang. Then he suggested that tomorrow would be soon enough to take care of what work remained. Everyone agreed.
Before going off to bed, Steve and Cecilia wandered out onto the back porch. The heat from their flushed faces diffused into the cool night air. For several minutes they stood there side by side gazing into the night, their arms enfolding one another about the waist. Their grip was firm, their breathing steady. At length Cecilia looked up at Steve and whispered, “I hope all this fuss today didn’t….”
Steve’s index finger pressed lightly against her lips. Drawing her in to himself, he gently rested her head in his left hand and embraced her with his right arm. Long and tenderly they kissed. She clasped him tightly to herself, feeling and loving the strength of his sinewy body. They were enveloped in their love. Then, wordless but still heavy with love, he walked her to her bedroom door, squeezed her hand, and mounted the staircase to his room and a beautiful night’s sleep.
The remainder of the week slipped swiftly by. They spent Friday morning cleaning the house and Friday afternoon retracing some of Cecilia’s favorite pathways leading to the haunts of her childhood. In the evening they gathered around the hearth once again.
All day Saturday they either received friends at the parsonage or went out to visit those who couldn’t come to them. A mere month before, this would have struck Steve as pure drudgery, but now he lapped up every moment of it in Cecilia’s company.
On Sunday Mrs. Myrholm was at the organ for the first service and Steve and Cecilia sat with Ellie on the main floor. For the second service Cecilia was at the organ, doing her best to make it a vehicle for worship and prayer, not for performance. Her normal preludes were not designed to be showpieces but stimuli for prayer. She once told me that if you come to church and worship and pray and don’t even notice that the organ is there to support you, the organist has done her job well.
After the second service, a number of people gathered up in the loft. They came to commune, if you will, with a dear friend. Nor was Cecilia a bit self-conscious about all of this attention directed toward her. These were her friends, after all, and she was as eager to be with them as they were to be with her.
For them she had to stay and play the organ for another half hour. She felt she owed these good people whatever she could give them for their generosity. As she was ending the last piece, old Mr. Andreason, who had directed the Christmas pageant for as long as anyone could remember, moved over next to her and said in his wavering voice, “You vill come back and play for us at Christmas, von’t you, Cecilia?”
“Only God Himself could prevent me,” she replied.
The train left in the middle of the same afternoon. There were tears of joy in Ellie’s eyes when she kissed Cecilia farewell and pulled Steve down to give him a kiss on the forehead, too. Beneath his calm restraint, Pastor Endsrud also revealed his deep satisfaction with his daughter’s choice. He blessed them both as they were about to mount the train and told Steve he was looking forward to their next opportunity to be together.
Steve and Cecilia boarded the train that day believing that life could not get any better. The Endsruds, for their part, remained on the platform and watched until the train disappeared into the distance, bearing their precious daughter and her dearest friend Steve, confident that the two of them were truly being guided in all things by the good hand of God.
XXXVII
The night Steve and Cecilia returned to St. Mark was blustery and stormy. By morning snow lay a foot-and-a-half deep on the ground, held in place for a time by the glassy gelidity that results in the early winter from a heavy wet snowfall followed by plunging temperatures. Overnight, life on the campus of Christiania College was fundamentally altered. Thick sheepskin coats appeared, and red noses and cheeks, and frozen fingers. The cold wind needed no more that the distance between two buildings to nip your ears good and proper. Folks hunkered down into their wraps and scurried as fast as they could between refuges of warmth. Work was accomplished mostly indoors; nature was admired mostly through the window.
A week later the severe cold relented and temperatures rose during the day to just below the freezing point. Steve and Cecilia resumed their evening strolls after her practice time. Not many couples dared to brave the elements after sundown, but they did.
It was consoling to me to observe their happiness from a respectful distance. As it happened, my own “romantic life” was going through some turmoil at the time, and they gave me hope for a brighter future in that department.
One evening when Steve was supposed to meet Cecilia in front of the women’s dormitory and walk her over to the music hall, she failed to show up on time. This had never happened before. He waited outside for a few minutes and then went in and requested the receptionist to call her. But she was not in her room. What could have become of her? Anxiety gnawed at him, but he tried to reason it away with the thought that something important must have detained her somewhere. Confused and uncertain as to what to do, he instinctively headed over to the music hall and mounted the stairs to her organ chamber.
But it was empty! There was no sign of her anywhere. The whole thing was growing more worrying by the moment. More confused than ever, he started down the stairs. As he rounded the third landing, so
mething on the ground down below in the trees just around the corner from the entrance caught his attention, barely visible in the moonlight. He stopped and peered out through the window into the night. Surely this wasn’t…. Look again! Could it be?… It was!
He flew down the stairs to the entrance. It was cold and dark, but Cecilia, oblivious to all else, was sitting on the ground, breathing heavily and caressing an object lying in the snow. He ran over to her, but she did not look up. Cautiously touching her shoulder, he pleaded, “Cecilia, my love, what’s the matter?”
She turned her head slowly up towards him. Her eyes were moist. Steve stared at her in astonishment. Then she sprang up and flung herself into his arms, burying her face in his shoulder and surrendering to her sobs. Opening his heavy sheepskin, he enfolded her trembling body into its depths and hung on to her.
Her sobbing eventually subsided to jerky little whimpers. She rolled her head weakly from side to side on his shoulder and whispered, “I am so silly, so very silly.”
The whole thing took Steve right back to the first nocturnal visit from his Specter Maiden and her grief-laden tears for him and the ants and the world.
Steve looked down at the object in the snow. It was a perfect cardinal, very beautiful but very dead.
“No,” Steve objected. “You are not silly. You are wonderful. You are an angel.”
Steve took a deep breath.
Then he nibbled her ear.
“You are my angel.”
She melted into his arms. They stood there in warm embrace. Both of them were panting.
“Let’s go upstairs,” he urged at length.
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