# Conflict (Prouty)/Book 1/Chapter 2

The Millers attended the Granite Congregational Church in Wallbridge. So did the Nawns. The Millers' pew was located on the center aisle about ten rows from the front. The Nawns' pew was located in the gallery over the left transept, next to the last row. Every Sunday, after the benediction had been said, a small and select reception took place in the vicinity of the Millers' pew. The prominent members of the church, and its chief financial supporters, all rented pews in the same general locality. The nave of the Granite Congregational Church seldom emptied under twenty minutes, but the sexton could begin to pick up the hymnals and scattered Ordersof-Service in the galleries and the transepts before the organist had left his loft.
As Sheilah sat in church the next morning with her head bowed gazing at her gloved hands folded in her lap, she wasn't listening to the fine big phrases of the long prayer. She was thinking how like a city the Granite Congregational Church was, with its aisles like streets, and numbered pews like houses, and desirable locations and less desirable. The location of the Nawns' pew in church corresponded to ​the location of their house in the city. They lived in a grimy white house on Flower Street in Wallbridge, down near the Armory. The Armory district in Wallbridge was as lacking in distinction as the gallery transept in the Granite Congregational Church. Sheilah suffered whenever she passed Felix's house in nondescript Flower Street—suffered with a queer fierce feeling of protection for him. She suffered every Sunday whenever Mr. Spaulding, smiling benignly upon the important flock gathered immediately in front of him, raised his hand above their heads and invited them (ignoring the transepts completely) to join him in prayer. It made Sheilah want to be kinder, and kinder still, to Felix Nawn up there in his gallery seat.
He was always there, seated between his thin, quiet, mouselike father, and anything but thin, quiet, mouselike mother. You were always aware of Mrs. Nawn if you were under the same roof with her. She had a big unruly laugh, and a big unruly voice, and a big unruly figure, too. At various social functions at the church, at which coffee and salad and sandwiches had to be prepared in quantities, Mrs. Nawn was always very much in evidence, accomplishing more than all the other women on the committee put together, and to Sheilah's secret discomfort (Sheilah often waited on table at these functions) making more noise about it than all the ​other women too. Even on Sunday morning in church, you were aware of Mrs. Nawn. She had some sort of chronic catarrhal difficulty evidently, and was constantly coughing and clearing her throat.
Beyond Mrs. Nawn sat Gretchen Nawn, Felix's older sister. Gretchen always wore big hats and fur pieces, and fuzzy wool coats, and ribbons and bows on her dresses. She never looked neat and trim, but as if shears would improve her, or a thorough plucking. Gretchen was engaged to be married to the sexton's son.
The sexton and Mr. Nawn appeared to be very intimate. Mr. Nawn often helped the sexton with the hymn-books and chairs after Sunday-School, and at the Sunday morning service Mr. Nawn passed the plate in the east gallery, while the sexton passed it in the west, but neither Mr. Nawn nor the sexton appeared before the pulpit afterwards. They delivered their boxes to a waiting deacon below in private, and stole modestly back to their seats.
Two years ago, when Sheilah had first heard that Gretchen Nawn was engaged to be married to the sexton's son, she made up her mind to find out about sextons. And plumbers. Mr. Nawn was a plumber. She made some inquiries of her mother. She was barely thirteen then.
'Would you ask the sexton and his wife to one ​of your dinner-parties, mother?' No use asking straight out what the social position of sexton was. There would be sure to follow a long lecture on democracy.
Mrs. Miller, taken by surprise, had replied, 'Well, hardly. Why should I?' And then had added laughing, 'What a question, Sheilah!'
Sheilah had risked one more.
'Would you ask Mr. and Mrs. Nawn to a dinnerparty?' After all, Mr. Nawn had a shop down-street with his name over it, and two telephone numbers.
But the question was one too many. Mrs. Miller was never long caught napping during this important 'formative stage' in Sheilah's development. Immediately she assumed her suave manner, and became the wise guiding parent of the books. If there was one thing she hoped to nip in the bud in Sheilah, it was snobbishness.
'You mean that big, good-hearted woman who goes to our church?'
Sheilah nodded.
'Why, if I thought Mrs. Nawn and her husband would enjoy one of my dinner-parties, certainly I would invite them. But I think they would feel rather out of place, and it wouldn't be kindness to make guests feel uncomfortable in our home, would it?'
​So that was how the Nawns stood! And some day she might have to be a Nawn!
She could feel Felix above her there in the gallery now, gazing stealthily down upon her, his shoulders stooped, his head thrust forward, the saffron-colored light from a near-by stained-glass window, falling upon him, and making him look pale and sickly. Like a Chinaman. Yes, a Chinaman. That was what he was like, with his half-closed eyes, and yellow cast of color, and baggy clothes, and shuffling way of moving. Like a Chinaman in a laundry! A wave of repugnance for Felix swept over Sheilah, in the very wake of her wave of pity for him.
The long prayer came to an end. The minister gave out the number of a hymn. The organist played the opening bars of a martial anthem. Sheilah stood up with the hymn-book open before her.
There was a lancet window cut high up in the dark, cavernous region above the pulpit, a mere slit in the vaulted masonry, but big enough to admit a shaft of sunlight that came piercing down through the dust-motes of the dim interior of the church, and fell upon Sheilah. Sheilah felt the unexpected brightness on her (the window usually was covered by a shade), and looked up. And suddenly one of ​those strange, unaccountable moments of elation, and release from fear, possessed her.
Queer about those moments, how they came on mysterious wings, soundless and unseen, and went likewise. Beauty in some form or other—a sunset, music, the first spring morning—would bring them to her. Or sharp physical sensations sometimes—fifty miles an hour in an open automobile with the wind tearing at her; or the intense heat of burning logs; or the intense cold of a sudden plunge into icy water. And always lately at those high ecstatic moments of hers she said the same thing to herself. She said it now. 'I'm going to win! I'm going to get over Felix Nawn!' And she gazed straight up into the dazzling shaft of light, and began to sing.