CHAPTER XIA LONG APRIL NIGHT
“LET a fellow in? Oh—sorry! Did I wake you up?” Black looked up, dazedly. It struck him that Red didn’t appear particularly sorry, in spite of his brusque apology. The red-headed doctor stood just within the minister’s study door, bearing all the appearance of one who comes on the wings of some consuming enthusiasm.
Black pushed a number of sheets of closely written paper under a convenient magazine. He ran his hand across his forehead, thrusting back dark locks more or less in disarray. His eyes were undeniably heavy.
“Come in—do! Have a seat. Let me take your coat.”
“Thanks. You look in the dumps. Somebody been flaying you alive?”
Black smiled a little wanly. “No. I rather wish they had. It might give me something to think about. What is it? You are full of some news—I can see that. Did you do me the honour of coming to tell me about it?”
Red laughed. “That’s like you. Anybody else would have left me to get around to it gradually, if he’d even noticed that I seemed to be bursting with news. Well, I am. And I had to blow off to somebody right now. Saw your light and knew you were mulling over some self-appointed task at this unholy hour. Thought it would probably be good for you to turn your attention to a fellow-sufferer.”
Black’s sombre eyes rested intently on Red’s face. Red had thrown his hat upon one chair, his motoring coat upon another, and had seated himself astride of a straight and formal manse chair, facing its back. His face was deeply flushed; his eyes held all manner of excited lights.
“You’re no sufferer,” was Black’s decision. “What is it? You’re not—off for the war?”
“You’ve got it. That’s exactly what I am. Had a cable half an hour ago from my friend Leaver at the American Hospital at N——. He says come along as fast as I can get there. He can use me, or have me sent to the front line, as I prefer. If Jack Leaver says come, that settles it. I’ll go as quick as I can get my affairs in order, take my physical tests, have my inoculations, and put through my passports. How’s that?”
“It’s great. Of course you’ll get to the front as fast as possible—I know you. I congratulate you—heartily.” Black got up and came over, his hand out. Red seized it. He hung onto it, looking up into Black’s face.
“Come on, too!” he challenged.
“I wish I could. I can’t—yet.”
Red dropped the hand—or would have dropped it if it had not been withdrawn before he had the chance. He scowled.
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t get the place I want till war is declared and we begin to send men. I’ll wait for that.”
“That means months, even if Congress loses no more time.”
“You know better. Our regulars will go mighty soon after we declare war. I’ll find my place with them.”
“And what’s the place you want?”
Black looked at him steadily. “You know, don’t you?”
Red nodded, grimly. “I suppose I do. Tom told me—but I wouldn’t believe it. Look here, man! Give up that fool notion that you’ve got to stick to your cloth, and go in for a man’s job. Come over with me and enlist in one of your Scottish regiments—that’s the place for you. Then you’ll see the real thing. You’ve got the stuff in you.”
Black’s face was going slowly white. “I’m an American. When I go I’m going as chaplain of an American regiment.”
“Oh, what damned rot!”
Red Pepper Burns was powerfully overwrought, or he wouldn’t have said it. The next instant he realized what he had said, for the lithe figure before him had straightened and stiffened as if Red had brought the flat of his hand against the other man’s cheek. At the same instant a voice cold with wrath said with a deadly quiet command in the ring of it: “Take that back, Doctor Burns.”
“I take back the word, if you like—but not the thought. I can’t do that. A chaplaincy isn’t a man’s job—not a young man’s job. Plenty of old priests and middle-aged parsons to look after the dying. A good right arm like yours should carry a rifle. I’d rather see you stay out of it altogether than go in for the army-cut petticoats of your profession.”
Then indeed Red saw a strange sight. He had seen many men angry in his time; he now saw one angrier than he would have believed possible without an outburst of profanity. Black grew so pale he might have been going to faint if the glitter in his black eyes hadn’t told the tale of a vitality which was simply taking it out that way instead of by showing red, as most men do. He opened his lips once and closed them again. He raised his right handand slowly clenched it, looking down at it, while Red watched him curiously. At last he spoke, in a strange, low voice, still looking at that right hand of his:
“I never wanted anything in my life so much as to knock you down—for that,” he said; and then his eyes went from his clenched fist to look straight into Red’s.
“Why don’t you do it? I give you leave. Itwasan insult—I admit it—the second one. But I don’t take it back. It’s what I think—honestly. If you don’t like it, it’s up to you to prove yourself of a different calibre.”
Red still sat astride of his chair, watching Black, whose gaze had gone back to that right hand of his. He opened and closed it again—and once more, and then he spoke.
“Doctor Burns,” he said, slowly, “I don’t think I have to take this sort of thing from you—and I don’t think I will.” He walked over to his study door, opened it, and stood there waiting, like a figure cut out of stone. Red leaped to his feet, his own eyes snapping.
“By jolly!” he shouted, seizing his hat and coat. “I don’t have to be shown the door twice!” And he strode across the floor. As he came up to Black the two pairs of eyes met again. Anything sadder than the look now in Black’s, overriding his anger, Red never had seen. It almost made him pause—not quite. He went along out and the door closed quietly behind him.
In the hall a plump, middle-aged figure was coming toward him. Anxiety was written large on Mrs. Hodder’s austerely motherly face. He would have gone by her with a nod, but she put out a hand to stop him, and spoke in a whisper:
“I hope, Doctor, you cheered him up a little. Poor man—I never saw him so down.”
Red grunted. “No—I’m afraid I didn’t cheer him upmuch,” he admitted, gruffly. “He wasn’t in any mood to be cheered.”
“No, indeed. A body can’t get over such news as he had to-day in a hurry. He hasn’t eat a mouthful since he heard.”
“What?” Red paused, in the very act of pushing on past her detaining hand. “Bad news, you say?”
“Why, yes—didn’t he tell you? He told me. Two of his sister’s sons are killed—and she only had three, and all in this awful war. Killed almost together, they were. He showed me their pictures—the likeliest looking boys—one looks something like Mr. Black himself. Why, I can’t think why he didn’t tell you, and him so terrible cut up about it.”
Red wheeled, and looked back at the closed study door. He looked again at Mrs. Hodder. “I’m glad you told me,” he said almost under his breath. “I think I’ll—go back.”
He went back, pausing a minute at the door before he opened it. Then he turned the knob softly, as if a very sick patient were lying within. He went in noiselessly, as doctors do, his eyes upon the figure seated again at the desk, its head down upon its folded arms. He crossed over to the desk, and laid his hand on Black’s right arm.
“I’m sorry, lad,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
Black raised his head, and now Red’s eyes saw what they had not seen before—the ravages of a real grief. The red-headed doctor was the possessor of rather the largest heart known to man, and it was that heart which now took command of his words and acts.
“I didn’t know. Black,” Red repeated.
“How do you know now?”
“Mrs. Hodder told me. A curse on me for hitting you when you were down.”
After a minute Black’s hand reached for the thin sheets of closely written paper which he had pushed under the magazine when Red had first entered. He looked them over rapidly, then pointed to a paragraph. Red scanned it as quickly as the unfamiliar handwriting would permit. As he read he gave a low ejaculation or two, eloquent of the impression made upon him.
“You may be proud of them,” he said, heartily. “And—they were of your blood. I don’t think I need question its virility. I guess I’d best leave it to you to decide what’s your course—and not butt in with my snap judgments.”
Black looked up. “Thank you, Doctor Burns,” he said, “for coming back.”
“Forget what I said—will you?”
“I don’t think I can—right away. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter—when you’re down and out with getting a letter like that. If I hadn’t been so hot with my own affairs I’d have seen for myself something’d happened.”
“It’s all right, Doctor.” Black rose wearily. “Some day I’m going to make you think differently. Until then—perhaps we’ll do better not to talk about it. I’m glad you’re going—I envy you. Let’s let it go at that, for to-night.”
Red held out his hand. “You’ll shake hands?”
“Of course.”
Somehow as he went away Red was feeling sorrier than he would have believed possible that anything had happened to make that handshake what he had felt it—a purely formal and perfunctory one. Why had he said those blamed mean things to Black about his profession, he wondered. Confound his red head and his impudent tongue! He liked Robert Black, liked him a lot, and better and better all the time; trusted him, too—he realizedthat. He had rushed into the manse study to-night from a genuine impulse to tell his good news to the man from whom he was surest of understanding and sympathy with his own riotous joy over his great luck in getting the chance to go across. And then he’d had to go and cut the fellow where he was already wide open with his own private sorrow! If there had been any way in which Red could have made it up to his friend—yes, Black had become his friend, no doubt of it, to rather an unanticipated degree—if there had been any way in which he could have made it up to him, taken the sting out of the hard words, and sent the “lad” to bed feeling that somebody besides his housekeeper cared that he was unhappy—well, Red would have given considerable, as he went away, to have done that thing. But there wasn’t any way. There hardly ever is.
If he had known just what he left behind him, in that manse study, undoubtedly Red would have been sorrier yet—if he could have fully understood it. It is possible that he could not just have understood, not having been made of quite the same fibre as the other man. What he would have understood, if he had chanced to see Black at about the third watch of the night, would have been that he was passing through some experience more tremendous than that which any loss of kin could possibly have brought him. The facts in the case were that, all unwittingly, Red Pepper Burns, with a few hasty words, had brought upon Robert Black the darkest hours he thus far had had to live through.
It tackled him shortly after Red had left—the thought which would not down—or, rather, the first of the two thoughts, for there were two with which he had to wrestle that long April night. It leaped at him suddenly, thatfirst thought, and in an instant, it had him by the throat. Why not admit that Red was right, that the average chaplaincy in the army or navy was a soft, safe job, and not an honoured one at all? Why not let everything else go, resign his church, go back to Scotland, look up men of influence he knew there, and try for a commission? Why not? Why not——Why not?
Would that mean that he would leave the ministry—permanently? More than likely it would. Well, what if it did? Could anything be better worth doing now than offering his life in the Great War? Why stay here, preaching flaming sentiment to a congregation who mostly thought him overwrought upon the whole subject? Why stay here, holding futile committee meetings, arguing ways and means with hard-headed business men who were everlastingly thinking him visionary and impractical? Why go on calling on old ladies and sick people—christening babies—reading funeral services—marrying people who would more than likely be better single? Why go on with the whole round of parish work, he, a man of military age, a crack shot—he had not spent all those years in the South for nothing!—possessed of a strong right arm, a genius for leadership—when an older man could do all these things for these people, and release him for work an older man couldn’t do? And if he were free——
Yes, it was here that his second temptation got in its startling work. If he were free—he would be free to do as other men did: marry a wife without regard to her peculiar fitness to be—a minister’s wife! It wouldn’t make any difference, then, if she never went to church, had no interest in any of the forms of religious life, didn’t read her Bible—didn’t even say her prayers when she went to bed—didn’t do anything orthodox—as he was prettysure somebody he knew didn’t. What did all that matter, anyhow, so her heart was clean—as he knew it was!
Black pushed his revolving chair back from his desk so violently that it nearly tipped over. He began to pace up and down the study floor, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, a tense frown between his brows. He walked and walked and walked, getting nowhere in his mental discussion precisely as he got nowhere in actual distance with all that marching. And suddenly the similarity between the two processes struck him, and he rushed into the hall, seized hat and coat, put them on as a man does who finds himself late for a train, and let himself out into the April night where the air was heavy with a gathering storm. It was precisely midnight by the sounding of a distant tower clock as the manse door closed behind him.
Do you happen to know, by any analogous experience, just what sort of a night Robert Black spent, alone with himself? If you do, no need to describe it to you. If you have never wrestled with a great spiritual temptation, beating it off again and again only to have it steal up and grip you more powerfully than before, then you can have no conception of what that night brought to Black. A concrete temptation—one to steal or rape or kill—can have no comparison in insidiously disarming power with one made up of forces which cannot be definitely assigned to the right side or the wrong. When the thing one wants to do can be made to seem the right thing, when Satan masks as an angel of light, and only a faint inner voice tells one insistently that his premises, his deductions, his conclusions, are every one false, then indeed does the struggle become a thing of increasing torture, compared with which physical distress is to be welcomed.
It was four in the morning when Black let himself intothe manse again, the light in his study seeming to him the only light there was left in the whole world, and that dim and unilluminating enough. Outside a heavy storm of wind had disabled the local electric service, and the streets for the last two hours had been dark as Erebus—and as Black’s own thoughts. He had been grateful for that darkness for a time; then suddenly it had oppressed him unbearably and he had fled back to his home as swiftly as he had left it. There—there, in the room where he was used to think things out, was the place for him to come to his decision.
As he came in at the manse door the lights flashed on again. It was undeniably warm and bright there in his study, but his heavy heart took no comfort from this. It was a physical relief to be inside out of the storm, but the storm in his soul abated not a jot at sight of the familiar place. The very look of the study table, filled with matters of one sort or another pertaining to his work—his writing pad, his loose-leaf notebook, his leather sermon-holder, the row of books with which he had lately been working and which were therefore lined up between heavy book-ends for convenience in laying his hand upon them—somehow the sight of these gave him a sense of their littleness, their futility, compared with the things he had been seeing as he walked. A rifle, with a bayonet fixed and gleaming at its end; a Scottish uniform, with chevrons on the sleeve and insignia on the shoulder—a worn, soiled uniform at that; men all about, real men, who did not fuss over trifles nor make too much of anything, men with whom he could be friend or enemy as he desired—these were what Black saw. He saw also the two brave lads who had gone to their death, his own blood, who had been coming over shortly to follow his lead in the big countrywhere he had found room to breathe, and whose untimely end he longed personally to avenge. And he saw—Jane Ray, over there, herself in service, meeting him somewhere, when both had done their part, and joining her life with his in some further service to mankind, social, reconstructive, unhampered by the bonds of any religious sect——
Oh, well—perhaps you can’t see or feel it—perhaps to you the logical thing seems the very thing that so called to Robert Black. Why shouldn’t he listen—why shouldn’t he respond—why wasn’t this the real thing, the big thing, and why shouldn’t he dare to take it, and give God thanks that He had released him from too small, too cramped, too narrow a place of usefulness, into one which was bounded only by the edges of the great world of need? What was it that held him back—that so hardly held him back?
It was a little black-bound book which first began to turn the tide. It was lying on the study desk, pushed well back under some loose papers, but it was there all the time, and Black never once lost the remembrance that it was there. Again and again he wished it were not there, because he knew through it all that he could never settle the thing without reference to that little worn book. It was not the Bible, it was a ritual-book, containing all the forms of service in use in the Church to which Black belonged; it held, among others, the service for the ordination of ministers, and that very book had been used in the ordination of Black himself. As a man fighting to free himself from his marriage vows might struggle to turn his thoughts away from the remembrance of the solemn words he had once spoken, so did Black, in his present mood, strive to forget the very nearness at hand of that little book. Andyet, at last, as he had known he would, he seized and opened it. After all, were such vows as he had made irrevocable? Many a man had forsaken them, first and last. Had none of these deserters been justified?
Yet, as he went over and over it, that which hit him so heavily was not the language of the ordination vows which he had been evading and which now struck him full in his unwilling conscience, gravely binding though the phrases were. Nor was it that of the closing prayer, well though he remembered how the words had thrilled him, and had thrilled him ever since, whenever he read them over: “Endue him with spiritual grace; help him perform the vow that he has made; and continuing faithful unto death may he at length receive the crown of life which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give him in that day.” No, it was not these words which held his reluctant gaze fast at last, but others, which he had written into the small blank space at the top of the page whereon the service began.
Two years before he had had sudden and unexpected word of his mother’s death on Easter Day—and the approaching Sunday would be Easter again. On that day, because she had been dear to him, and because he had been across the seas from her, he had written upon the page a renewal of his ordination vows. When he had been a little boy she had told him that some day she wanted him to be a minister of the Scottish Church, the Free Kirk of Scotland, in which she had been brought up. It had hurt her that he had wanted to go away to America, and though he had several times during the succeeding years crossed the ocean to see her, she had never quite recovered from the disappointment. On a strange impulse, that Easter Day, two years ago, knowing that he could never in thisworld see her face again, he had taken up his pen and written upon the blank space these words:
Beloved Mother:This is the most precious thing I have in the world. I give it to you this Easter Day of your entrance into Heaven. These words were used at my ordination. I have said them over again to-day, because of your love for me, and my love for you. I shall keep them always.Robert.
Beloved Mother:
This is the most precious thing I have in the world. I give it to you this Easter Day of your entrance into Heaven. These words were used at my ordination. I have said them over again to-day, because of your love for me, and my love for you. I shall keep them always.
Robert.
These, then, were the irrevocable words he could not take back. He had vowed to his God—he had promised his mother—— How shall a man take back such words? He had known all along it was unthinkable that he should, but his fight had been none the less tremendous for that—perhaps the more, for that. The tighter one feels the bonds that bind him, the harder is the struggle against them.
Black fell upon his knees before the old red-cushioned rocker which still held its place among the more dignified furnishings of the study. Somehow, it was this chair which was to him his Throne of Grace. He had not yet given up—it seemed to him he couldn’t give up—but he had come to this, that he could take the attitude of prayer about it, instead of striding blindly through the silent streets, his own fierce will driving him on. And even as he knelt, there came before him with new and vivid colour, like a fascinating portrait on a screen, the face of Jane Ray. Thus far, to-night, he had succeeded mostly in keeping her in the background, at least till he should have decided his great question. But with her sudden return to the forefront of his mental images came a new and startling thought: “If you went as she wants you to go, you mightmarry her before you went. You might go together. But as a chaplain—you can only be her friend. Make love to her—wild love, and take her off her feet! Be human—you’ve every right.”
At this he fairly leaped to his feet. And then began the very worst conflict of all, for this last thought was more than flesh and blood could stand. In his present mood, the exhaustion of the night’s vigil beginning to tell heavily against his endurance, he was as vulnerable as mortal could well be. Since the night when he had seen Jane act in Cary’s play and had taken her for the walk in the rain, her attraction for him had grown apace. He had not understood quite how it had grown till Red’s words to-night had set his imagination aflame. The vision of his going soldiering had somehow kindled in him new fires of earthly longing, dropping his priesthood out of sight. Now, suddenly, he found himself all but a lover, of the most human sort, thinking with pulses leaping of marriage in haste, with the parting which must inevitably soon follow keying the whole wonderful experience to the highest pitch. It was the sort of imagining which, once indulged in for a moment, goes flying past all bounds and barriers, while the breath quickens and the blood races, and the man is all man, with other plans, other hopes, other aspirations forgot, in the rush of a desire so overwhelming that he can take no account of anything else in heaven or earth.
Small wonder, then, that Black should find he must have it out with himself all over again, nothing settled, even the little black-bound book in one mad moment dropped into a drawer and the drawer slammed shut. Not fair—not fair—to have to keep that book in sight! God Himself knew, He must know, that when He made man he madehim full of passions—for all sorts of splendid things—and perhaps the greatest of these were war—and love! How should a man be satisfied to be—a priest? No altar fire could burn brightly enough for him to warm his cold hands. As for his heart—it seemed to him just then that no priest’s heart could ever be warm at all!
Could it not? Even as Black raged up and down his room, his hands clenched, his jaw hard set, his eyes fell upon a picture in the shadow—one he knew well. There had been a time when that picture had been one of his dearest possessions and had hung always above his desk. When he had come to his new church, and had been setting his new study in order, Tom had helped him hang his few pictures. It had been Tom who, glancing critically at this one, and seeing in it nothing to himself appealing—it was to him a dim and shadowy thing, of little colour and no significance—had hurriedly placed it over here, in this unlighted corner. Several times since Black had noted it there, and had said to himself that it was a shame for the beautiful thing to be so obscured—he must remove it to a better place and light, because he really cared much for it. But he had been busy—and careless—he had not removed it. And now, suddenly, it drew him. He went to it, took it from the wall, went over to the desk light with it. And then, as he looked, once again the miracle happened, and the spirit, the spirit which God Himself has set in every human creature, leaped up and triumphed over the flesh, and Black’s fight was over—for that time. Not over forever, perhaps, but over for that time—which was enough.
Perhaps you know the picture—it is well known and much loved. A great cathedral nave stretches away into the distance, the altar in the far background streaming withlight, the choir gathered, the service on. The foreground of the picture is all in shadow, and in the depths of that shadow kneels one prostrate form in an abandon of anxiety or grief. Behind it, unseen, stands a wondrous, pitying, strongly supporting figure with hand outstretched, an aura of light about it, love and understanding emanating from it. Not with the crowd at the altar, but with the lonely human creature in the darkness, lingers the figure of the Lord. The words below are these: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”
Robert Black dropped upon his knees once more before the old red-cushioned chair, but not, now, with will rebellious against a too hard fate, a too rigorous necessity. The old loyalty, at sight of the picture which in past days of happy faith had meant so much to him, had sprung into life again as a flame, quenched but not put out, springs as the wind fans it. A sob came into his dry throat, his head went down upon his folded arms. His body relaxed; after a minute he no longer knelt, he had sunk upon the floor with his face pillowed against the red cushion in the chair-seat.
“O my Christ!” he said slowly aloud, “I give up. I couldn’t do it for God—but I can for You! It was You I promised—I’ll keep it—till the end! If I go to war, I’ll go to carry—Your Cross! And if You’ll let me, I’ll carry it to the very front!”
Mrs. Hodder found him in the morning—though it was morning indeed when the fight was over. He had been asleep but an hour, there on the floor by the old red rocker, when she came briskly in to open the windows and give the manse study its usual early dusting and setting to rights. At sight of the desk light still burning dully in the pale daylight she looked astonished, and a moment later,as she espied the figure on the floor by the chair, she started, frightened. Trembling she called the minister’s name, stooping over him; but seeing at once the warm colour in his cheek, drew back with an agitated breath of relief.
“My land!” she murmured, “if the poor dear man ain’t so beat out he’s went to sleep right here on the floor. I always did know he’d kill himself if he kept rushin’ around so, tryin’ to be all things to all men—and all women. Seems like they couldn’t think of enough things to ask him to do for ’em, besides all the things he thinks of himself. That bad news he got, too—likely that was what used him up.”
“Yes,” answered a very sleepy voice, when she had shaken the recumbent shoulder a little and called his name once or twice, “all right. Breakfast ready?”
“Not yet—but ’twill be, in a jiffy. Goodness me, Mr. Black, you certainly did give me a start! You must have been tired to death, to sleep all night on the floor, so.”
Black got stiffly to his feet. “I’m all right. Listen—what’s that?”
It was an early morning newsboy on the street outside, stridently calling: “Extry—extry!——” What followed was not distinguishable. Black, overcoming his stiffness of limb in a hurry, got to the outer door, whistled loudly, and secured a paper. When he came back all appearance of sleep or weariness had fled from him.
“We’re in, Mrs. Hodder, we’re in!” he was half shouting, and his tone thrilled his middle-aged housekeeper. Long afterward she was accustomed to say, when she told the story: “I knew from that minute wherehe’dbe. We’d ought all have known it from the beginning, but I was so dumb I never sensed it till that morning when he comeback with the paper, callin’ out so solemn—and yet so happy-like—‘We’re in, Mrs. Hodder, we’re in!’ says he. I guess hewasin! That was a Saturday. And Sunday—he gave us the sign! My, but I’ll never forget that!”
The sign! Yes, that was what Black did give. All day Saturday he was making possible the thing he had long before determined he would do when the hour came. From mill to shop he went, with orders and measurements; late on Saturday evening he came out of the Stone Church alone, locking the door behind him. His face was worn but not unhappy, and that night he slept like a tired child, his cheek upon his hand, his heart quiet and steady in his breast.
Next morning, when the people came into church, every eye turned startled to one spot. At the right of the pulpit, on the floor just below, lifted a straight and sturdy standard. From it hung the American flag, its silken folds motionless in the still air, yet seeming alive in the glory of its vivid colour. Above it hung the only flag which held the right to hang above the National emblem—that of the Church Militant, the pure white pennant with its cross of blue.
In a brief service Robert Black, his face showing red and white by turns with a restrained emotion he could not wholly conceal, dedicated the two flags, and his people had their first glimpse of what it might mean to him and them before it should all be over and peace again upon the earth. They couldn’t know that to him the real dedication of the two flags had taken place the night before, when alone in the church he had lifted them into place and knelt before them, vowing anew his vow of allegiance and of service to God and country, a vow never again to be insecure upon his lips.