The next morning, at breakfast, Herman said, as he seized a hot biscuit,
"We'll dispense with grace this morning, and till after the war is
over." But Wallace blessed his bread in a silent prayer, and Mattie
thought it very brave of him to do so.
Herman was full of mockery. "The sun rises just the same, whether it's
'sprinkling' or 'immersion.' It's lucky Nature don't take a hand in
these theological contests. She doesn't even referee the scrap; she
never seems to care whether you are sparring for points or fighting to a
finish. What you theologic middle-weights are really fighting for I
can't see--and I don't care, till you fall over the ropes on to my
corns."
Stacey listened in a daze to Herman's tirade. He knew it was addressed
to Allen, and that it deprecated war, and that it was mocking. The fresh
face and smiling lips of the young girl seemed to put other affairs very
far away. It was such a beautiful thing to sit at table with a lovely
girl.
After breakfast he put on his cap and coat, and went out into the clear,
cold November air. All about him the prairie outspread, marked with
farm-houses and lined with leafless hedges. Artificial groves surrounded
each homestead, and these relieved, to some degree, the desolateness of
the fields.
Down the road he saw the spire of a small white church, and as he walked
briskly toward it, Herman's description of it came to his mind.
As he drew near, the ruined sheds, the rotting porch, and the windows
boarded up told a sorry story, and his face grew sad. He tried one of
the doors, and found it open. Some tramp had broken the lock. The inside
was even more desolate than the outside. It was littered with rotting
straw and plum stones and melon seeds. Obscene words were scrawled on
the walls, and even on the pulpit itself.
Taken altogether, it was an appalling picture to the young servant of
the Man of Galilee--a blunt reminder of the inherent ferocity and
depravity of man.
As he pondered the fire burned, and there rose again the flame of his
resolution. He lifted his face and prayed that he might be the one to
bring these people into the living union of the Church of Christ.
His blood set toward his heart with tremulous action.
His eyes glowed with zeal like that of the prophets of the Middle Ages.
He saw the people united once more in this desecrated hall. He heard the
bells ringing, the sound of song, the voices of love and fellowship
filling the anterooms where hate had scrawled hideous blasphemy against
woman and against God.
As he sat there Herman came in, his keen eyes seeking out every stain
and evidence of vandalism.
"Cheerful prospect, isn't it?"
Wallace looked up with the blaze of his resolution still in his eyes.
His pale face was sweet and solemn.
"Oh, how these people need Christ!"
Herman turned away. "They need killing--about two dozen of 'em. I'd like
to have the job of indicating which ones. I wouldn't miss the old man,
you bet!" he added, with cordial resentment.
Wallace was helpless in the face of such reckless thought, and so sat
silently watching the handsome young fellow as he walked about.
"Well, now, Stacey, I guess you'll need to move. I had another session
with the old man, but he won't give in, so I'm off for Chicago. Mother's
brother, George Chapman, who lives about as near the schoolhouse on the
other side, will take you in. I guess we'd better go right down now and
see about it. I've said good-by to the old man--for good this time; we
didn't shake hands, either," he said, as they started down the road
together. He was very stern and hard. Something of the father was hidden
under his laughing exterior.
Stacey regretted deeply the necessity which drove him out of Allen's
house. Mrs. Allen and Mattie had appealed to him very strongly. For
years he had lived far from young women, and there was a magical power
in the intimate home actions of this young girl. Her bare head, with
simple arrangement of hair, someway seemed the most beautiful thing he
had ever seen.
He thought of her that night, as he sat at the table with Chapman and
his aged mother. They lived alone, and their lives were curiously
silent. Once in a while a low-voiced question, and that was all. George
read the _Popular Science, Harper's Monthly Magazine_, and the _Open
Court_, and brooded over them with slow intellectual movement. It was
wonderful the amount of information he secreted from these periodicals.
He was better informed than many college graduates. He had little
curiosity about the young stranger. He understood that he was to teach
the school; beyond that he did not care to go.
He tried Wallace once or twice on the latest discoveries of John Fiske
and Edison, and then gave him up and retired to his seat beside the
sitting-room stove.
On the following Monday morning school began, and as Wallace took his
way down the lane the wrecked church came again to his eyes. He walked
past it with slow feet. His was a deeply religious nature, one that
sorrowed easily over sin. Suffering of the poor did not trouble him;
hunger seemed a little thing beside losing one's everlasting soul.
Therefore, to come from his studies upon such a monument of human
depravity as this rotting church was to receive a shock and to hear a
call to action.
Approaching the schoolhouse, his thought took a turn toward the
scholars and toward Mattie. He had forgotten to ask her if she intended
to be one of his pupils.
There were several children already gathered at the weather-beaten door
as he came up. It was all very American--the box-like house of white,
the slender teacher approaching, the roughly clad urchins waiting.