CHAPTER XVIINO OTHER WAY
“YOU!” It was Jane Ray’s astonished, all but shuddering thought. “You!—and not—me!Oh, how can it be? You, who I thought would stay outside with me—and the like of me—forever, before you would bind yourself like this. Doyoubelieve the things that he does?Youcould never be a hypocrite, Redfield Burns. Are you doing it for love of Robert Black? No, you wouldn’t do it, even for that, any more than I would. Then—whatisit?”
She sat with a white face and watching eyes which burned darkly beneath her close-drawn, sheltering hat-brim, while Red took upon himself the vows which Black administered. When it was done, and Red stood straight and tall again, and Black looked into his eyes and took his hand, and said the few grave and happy words of welcome which end such a service, Jane’s heart stood still with pain and love—and envy. It seemed to her that she must get away from the place somehow—anyhow—she could endure no more.
But there was no getting away yet. She had to see it through. And what came next was what Black had told Mrs. Hodder was to come. All through the service, far back in her usual place, the gray-haired housekeeper of the manse had sat, still trembling a little now and then, waiting to hear the blow fall. She it was who knew, shesaid to herself, the dreadful thing which was coming. Nobody else, she thought, knew that the minister meant to resign his charge. She didn’t see why he must resign it, why he shouldn’t come back. He had been here less than a year and a half; he was in the full tide of his success; the big church was his as long as he should choose to keep it. She wondered how they would take it when they knew. As for herself, her heart was very heavy. Who was there, in all the church, who would miss him as she would?
He was speaking. She moved her head and managed to see him through the close-ranged congregation. He had not gone back to the pulpit, he still stood beside the communion table, on the floor below, so it was difficult to get a view of him. He looked very manly and fine, she thought; his face was full of colour, as it always was when he had been preaching, and his black eyes were keen and clear as he looked his people in the face and told them that he was taking leave of them for good. He used few words, and what he said was very simple and direct. He had seen it his duty—and his great, great privilege—to go over to France, and try to do his part. He had preached what he believed with all his heart, and now the time had come to prove that he believed what he had preached. He said good-bye, and God bless them, and wouldn’t their prayers go with him that he might be of all the service to the men of his regiment that he could know or learn how to be?
He was withdrawing, that they might act upon his resignation according to custom, and he had all but reached the narrow door beside the pulpit when an impressive figure, that of Mr. Samuel Lockhart, in his well-fitting frock coat of formal wear, rose in his pew. He motionedto Mr. William Jennings, who sat near this door, and Jennings took a few steps after the departing minister and laid a hand upon his arm.
“Don’t go just yet,” Jennings warned him, in an excited undertone.
Black turned. Mr. Lockhart spoke his name, and he turned still farther and looked back at his chief officer. Why in the world wasn’t he allowed to take himself away at this juncture? Must he be detained to hear a conventional farewell, a speech expressing hope that he would come through unscathed, and thanks for what he had done for the church in the short time that he had been with them? There wasn’t much run-away blood in Black’s make-up, but he was certainly wishing at that instant that they hadn’t thought it necessary to hold him up, and that he had taken those steps toward the door fast enough to get through it and close it behind him before he could be stopped. And then for the hillside and his open-air talk.Thatwas what he wanted most—and next! It seemed to him he couldn’t breathe any longer, here with the flowers and the people and the organ music and the stained-glass windows! It was his church no longer.... Suddenly he knew that his heart was even sorer than he had thought it was.
But there was nothing to do but face it. So he did turn about, and came forward a few steps, and stood waiting. They were all looking at him—all those people—and some of them—why, yes, he could see spots of white all over the church, which grew momently thicker. Could it be that so many people as that were—crying? That sore heart of his gave a queer little jump in his breast. Why, then—they cared—or some of them cared—because he wasn’t coming back!
“Mr. Black”—Samuel Lockhart cleared his throat—“we have something to say to you before you go. We want you to know that we deeply appreciate all that you have done for this church in the short time you have been with us”—(yes, Black had known that was what he would say)—“and that though some of us have not always agreed with you in your views on certain points, we have been unable not to respect you. You yourself can testify that we have listened to you, as we have listened to-day, with close attention, always—you have compelled it. But to-day we have listened with a new respect, not to say a deep admiration for you.” (Black braced himself. His eyes were fixed steadily upon those of his chief officer. He told himself that it would be over sometime, and then he could get away.) “And we have listened with something else—with a sense of possession such as we have never had before.”
Mr. Lockhart cleared his throat again. Evidently this speech was tough on him, too. What in the world did the man mean? A sense of possession—of what?
“You see, we are not merely saying good-bye to you, Mr. Black. That of itself would be enough to make this occasion one long to be remembered. In fact, we are not saying good-bye at all, we are saying ‘Till we meet again!’ For—if you will have it so—though you are leaving us for the time being, you are going over to do what you consider your part in the war—as our representative. The Stone Church refuses your resignation, sir. Instead, it grants you a year’s leave of absence which it will extend if you ask it at the end of that period. And it says to you: Godspeed toOur Minister!”
There was a stir, a murmur throughout the big audience. Handkerchiefs were held suspended in mid-air whileeverybody tried his or her best to see the face of Robert Black. In his pew Redfield Pepper Burns had grown redder and redder, till his face rivalled his hair in vividness. Behind her pillar Jane Ray had grown whiter and whiter, as she tried to stifle her pounding heart. At the back of the church young Perkins, usher, all but gave out an ecstatic whoop, and pinched the arm of a neighbouring usher till it was an inflamed red, the victim only grinning back joyfully.
“You surely know,” said Robert Black, when he could command his voice, which it took him a full minute to do—“that a man must go with a braver heart in him if he goes—for others, than if he goes by himself. I thank you—and I accept the commission. God help me to be worthy of your trust.”
Of course he couldn’t get off till he had had his hand wrung by several hundred people, during which process, as he had expected, Jane slipped away. They wept over him, they smiled tearfully at him, they all but clung to him, but he could bear it now. If he suspected that it was Red who had done this thing for him at the last—the new member already beginning to make himself felt with a vengeance!—it was impossible not to see that now that it was done everybody was immensely glad and satisfied over it. The hardest heads he had ever encountered here were among those who were now proud to have him go from the old Stone Church, the first chaplain in all that part of the country to offer himself from the ministry. Oh, yes—no doubt but it was all right now, and Black would have been a man of iron if that sore heart of his had not been somewhat comforted.
He had dinner alone with Mrs. Hodder, refusing a score of invitations that he might give her this happiness. Shehad been up, baking and brewing, since daybreak, and he had divined that it would be a blow to her if he brought even one guest home. He was glad, moreover, of the hour’s interval in which to draw breath. He did his best to make the eating of the sumptuous meal a little festival for the woman opposite him, but in spite of his best efforts it partook of the character of the parting bread-breaking.
“You—you won’t be getting into danger so much, Mr. Black, will you, as if you was a regular soldier?” Mrs. Hodder suggested timidly, as the dinner drew to a finish with not more than half the food she had prepared consumed. It was the first time her thrifty nature had ever thus let itself go, and she had looked conscience-stricken ever since she realized the situation. But her question voiced the thought uppermost in her mind. It took precedence even of her worry about the terrible waste of which she had been guilty!
“Oh, you’re not to be anxious over any danger for me,” Black assured her, smiling across the table at her. “Just remember that some day you’ll get up another just such splendid dinner as this for me, and then we’ll eat it with better appetites. I shall come back ravenous for home cooking, as all soldiers do.”
“Then—you’ll keep the place open for me, sir?”
“You’ll keep it open for me, Mrs. Hodder. It’s you who will be in demand for other positions. I’ll think myself lucky if you promise to come back to me.”
He was glad to get away now from her tearful face, for this assurance upset her completely, and she could only apologize and weep again into a large handkerchief already damp from the demands made upon it at the morning service.
Red and the big Macauley car were at the door nowwith Mrs. Burns, Jane Ray, and little Sue Dunstan already established in it. They were off and away at once. Black sat beside Red, and the two fell into talk while those behind silently watched them. They were an interesting pair to watch, in conversation.
“They are so different, one would hardly have expected them to become such devoted friends,” Mrs. Burns said to Jane, after a time.
“Oh, do you think they are so different?” Jane glanced from the black head to the red one—they were not far apart. Black’s arm was stretched along the back of the seat behind Red; he was leaning close and talking rapidly in Red’s ear. The latter was listening intently; from time to time he nodded emphatically, and now and then he interjected a vigorous exclamation of assent. Evidently, whatever the subject under consideration, they were remarkably agreed upon it—which had by no means always been the case in past discussions. Perhaps they were agreeing to agree to-day, since it was the last—for so long.
“They seem to me much alike,” Jane went on, at Mrs. Burns’ look of inquiry. “Not in personality, of course, but—well—in force of character, and in the way they both go straight at a thing and never let go of it till they have accomplished what they set out to do.”
“That’s true; it may be the secret of the sympathy between them. For a long time I thought they would never get together, but it’s been coming, and now—and to-day—— This has been such a wonderful day, in spite of the sadness of it! You were at morning service?”
“Yes, Mrs. Burns.”
“None of us will ever forget it.”
“No.”
The big car had them up in the hills in short order. As they came over the last steep rise Red whistled sharply with surprise.
“My faith!” he ejaculated. “Where do they all come from, in this God-forsaken region!”
“God hasn’t forsaken it. That’s a man-made phrase. But they can’t all come from this locality. I should say not—and they haven’t.... Why, there are my boys—any number of them. Well!”
Black leaped out of the car, which had been instantly surrounded. Here they certainly were, ranks upon ranks of boys and young men, not only from his church but from the town outside. Everyone of them wore a tiny American flag on his coat-lapel.
“You see,” explained young Perkins, lively usher at the Stone Church, “we didn’t see how we could spare you to come off up here this last day unless we came along. Please excuse us for butting in, but we couldn’t stand it any other way.”
“We mean it as a sort of guard of honour,” declared a tall boy, just out of short trousers, and extraordinarily disputatious for his age, with whom Black had held many a warm argument in past days. “Besides, we——”
Evidently something was on the tip of his tongue which had to be suppressed, for he was hauled off by Perkins in a hurry while others took his place. The young men all seemed much excited, and Black had to bring them to order lest they put the rest of his audience in the background. There were plenty of men and women, and even children present, who were obviously from the hill region, and these were they whom he had come to meet.
Under his direction Perkins shortly proved that histalents as an usher could be exercised quite as well in the open air as under the stately roof of the home church. He soon had the assemblage massed on a side hill which he had selected as a sort of amphitheatre where all could see and hear the man who stood upon the flat and grassy plateau below. From this point of vantage presently Black spoke to them.
One of the reporters of the morning, at the edge of the crowd, sat taking notes in the very shortest of shorthand. He needed all his powers now, even more than he had needed them in the morning, for Black spoke fast and crisply, as a man speaks when he feels the time is short and there is much to say. As the young reporter set down his dots and dashes he was subconsciously exulting to himself: “Gee, but I’m glad I got in on this! What a bully story this’ll make!”
It did make a story, but it was one which like that of the morning could never be fully written. The words Robert Black spoke now were not words like those of the morning. He was looking into faces whose aspect gripped his very soul; it seemed to him that they had all the same expression—one of exceeding hunger. Even his boys—though he was not talking now to them—were watching him as those watch who are being fed. There is no look like that to inspire a man, to draw out his best and biggest, and it drew Black’s now, beyond anything of which he had before been capable. The day, the hour, the near approach of his departure, that “last chance” conviction which had spurred him all day—all these facts and forces combined to make of this final, most informal service he was to hold in his own country for many a day the richest and most worthy of them all. If it were not so, then those—Black’s nearest friends—who listened with greatestappreciation and best capacity for judgment, were mightily deceived.
Red stood with folded arms at the very back of the audience, his hazel eyes seldom leaving the figure of his friend. What was in his heart none could have told. His face was set like a ruddy cameo as Ellen his wife looked up at it now and again. Beyond him Jane Ray stood beside a great elm; she leaned a little against it, as if she needed its support. It was a tremendous hour for her, following, as it did, all the repressed emotion of the morning. Her face had lost much of its usual warm colour,—her fine lips tensed themselves firmly against possible tremor. Could she live through the day, she asked herself now and then—live through it and not cry out a recantation of the old position of unbelief, not call to Heaven to witness her acceptance of a new one, passionately believing—and then run into the arms she knew must open for her? But she was dumb. Even he would not trust a change in her now, she was sure, though his eloquence this day had been that to sway far harder hearts than hers. No, she must let him go—there was no other way. She had made her bed and heaped it high with distrust and scorn, and she must lie on it. Even for him she could not take up that bed and walk!
Black ceased speaking. The hush over the hillside, for the full minute following, was that of the calm before the storm. Then—the storm came. Black’s young men—twenty of them from the Stone Church—and eleven from the town, thirty-one in all—stirred, looked about at one another, nodded one to another, came forward together.
“Mr. Black,” said young Perkins, simply enough—fortunately he had not tongue nor taste for oratory—“someof us have decided not to let you go ‘over there’ alone. Of course we can’t go with you, though we’d like to mighty well. But we can enlist—and that’s what we’re doing—to-morrow morning. We thought you’d like to know.”
Back up the hillside a smothered sound burst from Red’s throat—a queer sound between a groan and a laugh. If Black had heard it, he would have understood what it meant, and his heart would have ached harder than ever for his friend. His wife did understand, and she slipped her hand into his, where he crushed it till it ached with pain, and she did not withdraw it. Beside them Jane Ray bit her lips until they all but drew the blood. Was there no end, then, to the breaking tension of this incredible day?
“I do like to know,” said Robert Black, his eyes fiery with joy and sorrow and all the things a man may feel when a group of young patriots offer their all, unknowing half what it means, but understanding enough to make the act enormously significant of forming character, “and I’m proud and happy beyond words.”
A hulking young giant from the hills stumbled forward, and spoke diffidently from the edge of the group:
“I guess I’ll be goin’ too,” he said.
Perkins whirled. “Bully for you!” he shouted, and made a flying wedge of himself through the other fellows, to shake the giant’s brawny hand.
There came a second hill boy, younger and slighter than the first. “He’s my pardner,” he said, with an awkward gesture toward the other. “I guess if he goes, that’ll mean me too.”
There were four of these. Fathers and mothers rose in protest. The first lad turned and faced them.
“Looky here!” he called defiantly. “We ain’t goin’ to let them city fellers do our fightin’, are we? Not on your life!”
That settled it. They were not going to let anything like that happen—not on those unhappy lives of theirs.
It was over. The car got away from the last clinging young hand that would have detained it, and in the long shadows of the late afternoon swung down the hills to the plain below, and the big town, and the last hours of the day. When at length it halted in Jane’s narrow street beside her door, above which her little sign no longer hung, Black, getting out with her and Sue, said a word in Red’s ear. The other shook his head.
“We’ll wait,” he insisted. “You’ve mighty little time to spare now, if you have a bit of a snack with us before your train goes. And I vow we won’t let you off from that.”
“I don’t want to be let off. Give me five minutes here, and I’ll be with you.”
“We will come back for you at train time, Miss Ray,” said Mrs. Burns.
“You don’t think best to ask her to supper with us?” questioned Red, as the others disappeared into the now empty shop.
“I asked her and she refused. I knew she would.”
“Don’t wonder. These blamed last stunts——”
Red lapsed into a dark silence, his chin sunk upon his broad chest.
Within the shop Black turned to Sue. “Go out in the garden, and wait, will you, Sue?” he asked, with the smile which the child would have obeyed no matter what request had gone with it. Reluctantly she closed the shop door behind her. In the dismantled, empty place, where hehad first met Jane nearly eighteen months before, Black said what he had come in to say.
“I shall write—and you will answer. We can’t do without that, can we? And there’s no reason why we should. Is that understood?”
“If you wish it.”
“Don’t you wish it?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for standing by me this day. I know it’s been hard for you. I couldn’t help that—I had to have you. You’re not sorry—you stayed by?”
“No.”
“Jane—there are a thousand things I want to say to you, but they’ve all got to go unsaid—except one. Wherever I am—wherever you are—it will be the same with me. There’ll be no one else—there never can be, now. I wanted you to know—if you didn’t know already.”
“Yes.”
“Haven’t you a word to say to me—Jane?”
She shook her head, trying to smile. “What is there to say? Except—good-bye.”
“I wish I could put words into your lips,” cried Robert Black, under his breath. “I want to hear you say them so. At least—Jane—I can’t go without—once more——”
She was silent. It was somehow as if her will were in shackles, and held her so she could neither move nor speak. When they had been together at the seashore it had been she who had said the more, she who had forced the issue. Now—she was like a dumb thing, suffering without power to free herself. It seemed to her that her heart must break if he did not take her in his arms, and yet she could not show him that heart. The whole day had seemed to build a barrier mountains high betweenthem, which she could do nothing to lower. Her hands, pressed close to her sides as she stood before him, made themselves into fists, the nails pressing into the firm pink palms until they all but cut the flesh.
Suddenly he reached down and seized the hands in his, then looked at them in amazement, as he drew them up to view, because they did not relax.
“What does this mean?” he asked her quickly. “Are you—as unhappy—as that?”
She lifted her eyes then, and let him see—what he could not help seeing. It was as far beyond what she had let him see on that other day as this day in their lives was greater than that.
“Oh, Jane!—Oh, my dear!” He could only whisper the words. “And I have—to leave you!”
“Yes. Good-bye——” she said again, steadily.
He let go one of her hands, and with his strong fingers made her loosen one gripped fist. Then—the other.
“I can’t bear to see them like that,” he said, with a queer, tortured smile. “I want——” And he lifted first one palm and then the other to his lips, and then gently closed the fingers again. “Don’t hold them so tight again—please!” he said. “I don’t want to have to remember them—that way. Jane—I don’t know how to go!”
“You must. Doctor Burns is waiting for you. Don’t mind about me.”
“Don’t mind about you!” It was a cry of pain. “Why—you’re all I do mind about—now. I’ve done all the things I had to do to-day—they’re all done—everything’s done—but this. And this—why, this—is so much the hardest thing of all——”
How could he speak at all, she wondered, when she could not? She did not realize that expression of onesort or another was the breath of his life to-day. That having poured himself out, all day, to others, he could not cease from giving; that though to-morrow might bring upon him a silence and an immobility as great as her own, for to-day his lips must have speech; his spirit, action.
“Jane—you won’t deny me—I can’t go without it. God knows our hearts—knows——”
He left his own heart on her lips then, in one bitter-sweet moment of such spending as he had never known—or she—and went away, leaving her alone there in the deserted shop with the memory of his whispered, “God bless you—my Jane!” She ran to the window, screening herself from view as best she could, and saw him get into the car, and saw the car leap away down the narrow street.
An hour later she was at the station. Black had not been in the car when it had come for her; it was full of other people—the Macauleys and the Chesters, Red’s neighbours and among Black’s best friends. Mrs. Burns explained that the minister’s new guard, the boys who were to enlist to-morrow, had come for him in a body, and had borne him away in the biggest car they had been able to find.
At the station there was the expected crowd, only it was a larger crowd than any of them could have anticipated. It was evening now, and almost dark, and it was beginning to rain. The station lights shone on banks of lifted umbrella tops; the little flags in the young men’s coats grew wet. People went about saying what a pity it was that it had to rain. And if it hadn’t been Sunday night there would have been a band. Jane found herself very thankful that there was no band. And then, suddenly, there was a band—a small one, playing “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” and the crowd was singing with it.Jane wondered, through her dumb pain, how Robert Black was bearing that!
Red was out of the car and off in the crowd—no doubt but he was with Black. He had been heard to express the hope that the blamed train would be on time and cut the agony short, but of course it wasn’t. It was only ten minutes late, however, though to Jane those ten minutes, marked by the clock on the car’s dash, were the longest she had ever known. Then—there was the shrill whistle in the distance she had been waiting for, coming at an interval in the music, and she heard it plainly, and her heart stopped beating.
Black and Red were at the door of the car—they had had to push their way through the people. Black was shaking hands with Mrs. Burns—with Mrs. Macauley—with everybody. Then Jane felt her hand in his, and lifted her eyes to meet his. The headlight from another car shone full in his face; she saw it as if it looked at her from very far away. But his eyes—yes, she could see his eyes—and see how they were piercing hers, as if he would look through to her very soul for that last time—oh, she was sure it was for the last time!
He did not say a word to her—not a word. But his hand, for that instant, spoke for him. Then he had gone away again, through the crowd, for the train was in, and the locals made but short stops. A shout went up—Black’s young men waved their arms, their flags—their umbrellas—everything they had.
He stood on the back platform, as he so often had stood before, when the train pulled out. He looked back at them, the crowds, the flags, the umbrella tops—but he saw only one thing—the thin, gleaming rails, stretching away, farther and farther into the distance—and the night.