THE ALTAR OF HIS PURPOSE
“I think maybe--it’s come, Mr. Black.”
Mrs. Hodder, housekeeper to the manse, stood trembling in the study
doorway, a telegram in her hand. Yes, Mrs. Hodder was trembling. Robert
Black would never know how like a mother she felt toward him. A lonely,
more than middle-aged woman can’t bake and brew and sew on buttons and
generally look after a bachelor of any sort without coming to have a
strong interest in him--normally a maternal one. And when the bachelor
is one who treats her with the consideration and friendliness this man
had always shown Henrietta Hodder, small wonder if she comes to have a
proprietary interest in him little short of that belonging to actual
kinship.
Black jumped up from his desk. It was Saturday night, and his sermon
was still in preparation. This was unusual with him, but everything
that could happen had happened, this week, to consume his time and
delay him. Everybody, it seemed to him, in his parish, had needed his
services for some crisis or other. He was tired of body and jaded of
spirit, and he was extremely discontent with the outlines for the
sermon which he had with difficulty dragged out of his unwilling mind.
And now, in the twinkling of an eye, everything was changed.
He read the message in one hurried instant. Yes, it was here, couched
in military language with military brevity. He was to proceed at
once--nobody in the Service is ever ordered to go anywhere, always
to proceed--and to report within forty-eight hours to his commanding
officer at a camp at a long distance. This meant--yes, of course
it meant--that he must leave town by the following evening, Sunday
evening. And it meant also, equally of course, that between this hour
and that he must be practically every minute on the jump. Well, he
couldn’t but be glad of that.
His weariness vanished like magic. Mrs. Hodder, watching him read the
message, knew by the way he stiffened and straightened those shoulders
of his, which had been humped over his desk when she came to the door,
that the expected call had come. He looked at her over the yellow sheet.
“Yes--this is it!” he said. “I must be off--to-morrow night.”
She swallowed a great lump in her throat. “I expect--there’ll be a many
things to do,” she said. “I’ve got your clo’es in order--I’ve been
keeping them mended up, ready--your socks and all.”
Black smiled. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that not an
article of his ordinary apparel would go with him to France, but he
hadn’t the heart just then. It struck him that Mrs. Hodder was looking
a little odd to-night--strangely pale for one whose countenance was
usually rather florid. Then--he saw her hand shake as she put it up to
smooth back her already smooth gray hair, an act invariable with her
when disturbed in mind. It came over him that his housekeeper was not
just happy over his wonderful news. And suddenly, he almost understood
why. Not quite. How could he know what ravages he had committed upon
that staid, elderly heart?--he who had borne himself with such
discretion under this roof that he had never so much as touched the
woman’s hand except to shake it.
His own heart suffered, at this instant, its first pang at the thought
of leaving this comfortable home of his and the ministrations of this
plain person who had--yes, she had done her best to mother him--he
knew it now--as far as a woman could who was shut away by all sorts of
invisible barriers from any real approach. He put out his hand and took
her trembling one and held it in both his own. He was a chaplain now,
he was leaving his parish, he could do as his will dictated!
“I want you to know,” he said, “that I appreciate, as well as a man
can, every thought you have taken for me. You’ve made this house seem
as much like a real home as you could possibly have done. I shall
remember it always.”
Pale? Had she been pale? She had flushed, in an odd, mottled sort of
way, to her very ears--and the back of her neck. Her breath seemed to
come a little short as she answered him.
“But--you’ll be coming back, Mr. Black?” she questioned, anxiously.
“You’re only going for--a while? I’ll--you’ll--I wanted to speak for
the place again, if I might, when--you come back, sir.”
Black’s softening face hardened suddenly. “No, I don’t expect to come
back to this parish, Mrs. Hodder,” he said. “I’m resigning to-morrow.”
“_What’s that?_”
A deep voice boomed from the hall outside, and Black and Mrs. Hodder
turned together. Red appeared in the doorway of the study, having met
the telegraph messenger coming away just outside the house. He was, by
now, the sort of friend who follows up a telegraph messenger on the
chance that he may be needed.
Mrs. Hodder knew her place, if momentarily her master himself had
caused her to forget it. She withdrew her hand from Black’s and left
the room hurriedly; and the tears which flowed the moment she was out
of sight were not wholly unhappy ones. As for her hand--the hand he had
held so warmly in both his--well, it was a very precious hand to her
now. Like Jane Ray, she had “something to remember!”
“What’s that you say?” demanded Red, coming in like a gathering
tornado. “I know you’ve got your orders, or you wouldn’t be found
holding your housekeeper’s hand. But--what in thunder do you mean by
saying you’re resigning your church?”
Black sat down on the edge of his desk--he was rather glad to sit down
on something if an argument with R. P. Burns in his present mood was to
take place. Not that there could be any argument, but he knew the signs
of warfare when he saw them.
“Why, there’s nothing else to do,” he replied, quietly.
“Nothing else to do! Do you mean to say they’re not giving you a leave
of absence?”
Black shook his head. “I’ve not asked for any.”
“But they know you’re going?”
“Know I’m likely to go. It was only fair to tell them that to give them
a chance to look around for a successor. I’ve been perfectly frank with
Mr. Lockhart about it. He’s been skeptical all along as to my getting
the call for a good while yet, but I’ve warned him over and over that
it might come--just as it has come. So--I’m resigning in the morning,
and getting off at night. Good way to go--isn’t it?”
“Good way for you--and a blamed poor way for some of the rest of us.
See here! Oh, hang that church--what’s the matter with it? Why, my wife
didn’t know this. She supposes, of course, you’re going on leave. She
thinks, as I did, that the parish has got a string on you that amounts
to a rope, to haul you back with. Do you mean to say---- Why, confound
Sam Lockhart! I thought he was one of your best friends.”
“He is.”
“I know,” admitted Red, “you haven’t been particularly easy to get
along with. You preached war when they wanted you to breathe peace,
ever since you came. You’ve insisted on picturing the flowing blood
over there when it made some of ’em feel ill just to hear about
it. You’ve had your way about a lot of things, Bob, that they were
accustomed to manage their way. I suspect you’ve been a thorn in some
folks’ flesh--bless your dogged spirit! But--my faith!”--and his eyes
shot fire--“to let you cut loose and go to war, without---- Why, they
ought to be proud to _send_ you. They ought to take you to the station
with a brass band. They ought----”
“Oh, see here!” Black slid off the desk-edge, came over to his friend,
and caught him by both shoulders. “You can’t make people over by
roaring at them in my study. And much as I want to see you, and warm
as you make the cockles of my heart by your roars, I’ve got to put you
out and get down to work. Why, man, do you realize this changes all my
plans for to-morrow in an instant? I can’t preach the thing I meant
to preach--not now. I’ve had just one text in mind for my last Sunday
here, whenever it should be, and I’ve got to preach on that if I stay
up all night to think it out. And since it’s already----”
Red pulled out his watch. “Yes, it’s ten o’clock this minute. All
right--I’ll get out. But first--lad----”
He paused. The flow of his words, which had been well started for a
torrent, halted, ceased. He cleared his throat. He took his lower lip
between his teeth and bit it savagely, then released it, waited a
minute longer, and spoke. But--could this be Red speaking?
“Bob,” he said, “before you go--will you take me into your church?”
There was a moment’s silence, because Black’s heart simply
stopped--turned over--and then went on again; and an interval of
experience like that always makes speech impossible. And when he did
speak all he could say was:
“Oh, Red!”
“All right. Now, I’ll go.”
Black’s hand seized his. The two hands gripped till they practically
stopped the circulation in both.
“I’ll get consent to have a special communion service in the morning--I
should have wanted it anyway. You know, of course, you’ll have to come
before----”
Red nodded. “I don’t like that part. You’re the only man I want to come
before--but I’ll go through the usual procedure. I may not measure up
to----”
“Oh, yes, you will. You’ve always measured up, only you wouldn’t admit
it. Don’t mind about that--just answer the questions in your own way.
See here, Red----”
But he couldn’t say it, and Red knew that he couldn’t--and didn’t
want him to. Didn’t Red know without being told that if there was one
thing that could take the soreness out of Black’s heart over having
his church let him go like this, it would be his receiving this other
great desire of his heart? How did Red know that Black wanted him
in his church? Why, they had become friends! There need be no other
explanation.
So then Red went away. Where he went doesn’t matter, just now, though
wherever it was he went straight as an arrow to it--rather, he went
straight as one of those famous seventy-five millimetre shells of the
Great War went to its objective. And when he hit the spot something
blew up and things were never the same again in that particular place,
quite as he had intended they shouldn’t be. For a new member of the
Stone Church--which he wasn’t--yet--his activities seemed to begin
rather early.
Black sat down to his new sermon. No, he walked the floor with it. He
had said there was just one text he wanted for that sermon, and given
that text, plus the tremendous stimulus of the complete change in the
situation, he could hardly stand up under the rush of his thoughts
about it. Instead of ploughing heavily, as he had been doing, his mind
was now working with lightning rapidity. There was no time to write the
new sermon out, he could only frame its outlines and stop at his desk,
every now and then, to make notes of the filling in. By midnight it was
complete--the last sermon he was to preach in this church; it might
easily be the last he would ever preach in any church. That didn’t
matter; all that mattered was that he should get his white-hot belief
upon the cold anvil of his audience’s intelligence and there hammer it
into shape till the anvil was as hot as metal, and something had taken
form that had never had form before.
It was two o’clock when he finally went to bed. It was four o’clock
when he went to sleep, six when he awoke. When his eyes opened he had
a new thing on his mind--and it was an old thing--a thing he had long
meant to do and had never done. Strange that it should rise up to
bother him now when the day was already so full! He tried to put it
aside. He was sorry, but it was too late, now. A pity that he hadn’t
seen to it long ago, but it was certainly too late now.
Was it too late? And why was the thought of it knocking so persistently
at the door of his plans for the day if it were not that it was for him
to do, after all? Somehow he couldn’t put it aside--the remembrance of
that forlorn and neglected community, up on the hills, so near and yet
so far, where he had buried Sadie Dunstan, and to which he had always
meant to return--some day. And that day had never come. Well, he had
been incessantly busy--he could have done no more. Demands upon his
time and strength had called him in every direction but--that. Yet
probably he had been no more needed anywhere than there. Too bad, but
it was most certainly too late now.
At seven his telephone rang. It was Red’s voice which hailed him:
“I just want to put myself at your disposal for the day as far as I can
cut my work to do it. Jim Macauley says if you want his seven-passenger
for any purpose whatever consider him yours to command. He thought you
might want to pay some farewell visits or something, and would like to
take a few people along. Plenty of candidates for the job--you’ll have
to pick and choose. What time do I--face the music?”
“Just before church, Red--ten o’clock in the vestry room. I’ve called
them all--they don’t know whom it is they’re to meet. About the
car--thank you and Macauley. I want very much to go up on the hills,
where Sue Dunstan came from, and hold a little open-air service this
afternoon. I’m going to ask two of my boys to run up there and get as
many people notified as possible.”
“Great Cæsar! That the way you’re going to spend your last hours? Why,
Ellen is planning to open our house for all your friends and----”
“Thank her heartily for me, will you? And tell her that if she and you
will go along with me up there I’ll like it much better than anything
else she can do for me. I want to take Miss Ray, too, if I may.”
“Anything you say goes, of course. I told my wife I doubted if you’d
stand for the reception idea, and I don’t blame you for not wanting
it, but--I didn’t expect you’d want to do a stunt like that. All
right--I’ll stand by. Sure you don’t want to preach to the crowd
that’ll be at the station? Wonderful opportunity--better not miss it!”
“See you at ten o’clock, Red. Stop joking about this day of mine.”
“I’m not joking--I’m just whistling to keep my courage up. If you think
this day is anything but deadly serious to me----”
“I know it is. Good-bye--Best Friend!” And Black hung up the receiver
on those last words which he would hardly yet have ventured to speak
if the two men had been face to face. But his heart was warm with a
great love for Red this day--and a great reverent exultation over what
was soon to happen. Why not speak the words that soon, call he ever so
loudly, could not be heard, except by the hearing of the spirit?
He rushed through his breakfast--it was a banquet, if he had known it,
prepared by devoted hands--and all but ran through the early morning
streets to the dismantled shop and home on the little side street. Sue
admitted him, and took him through to the rear garden where Jane, in
working dress, was packing a box. She stood up, and the colour rushed
into her face at sight of him.
“I have my call--I go to-night. I’m the lucky one to go first and leave
you behind. But I’m sorry about that, too.”
She pulled off the gloves which had protected her hands, unfastened her
apron, gave both to Sue, and sent her inside with them. Then she faced
him.
“Somehow I knew it was close at hand,” she said. “To-night! Well----”
“This afternoon will you go with Doctor and Mrs. Burns and me--and
Sue--I should like to take Sue--up to the hills where the Dunstans
lived? I want to say a few things to those people up there before I go.
I always meant to do it, and never seemed to get around to it. Somehow
I can’t go away without doing it. And I want you there.”
She nodded. “Of course I’ll go. I--yes, I’ll go--of course. Oh, how
glad you are to be off--and how I envy you!”
“Are you coming to church this morning?”
“Oh!--I--think--not.”
“Jane!”
She looked up at him and away again. “I don’t think I--can,” she said.
He was silent for a minute, studying her. In the bright light of the
Sabbath morning, there in the garden, she had never seemed to him a
more perfect thing. Every little chestnut hair that grew away from her
brow, curving upward in an exquisite sweep from her small ear, stood
out in that light; the texture and colour of her cheek, the poise of
her head upon her white, strong neck--somehow he couldn’t help noting
these lovely details as he had almost never noted them before. It
was as if he saw her through eyes sharpened already by absence and
loneliness. He tried to fix the image of her upon the tablet of his
mind--just the sheer physical image of her, as he might have put away a
photograph in his pocket, to carry with him. Yet it was something far
more subtle than that that he was trying to fix--her whole personality,
body and mind and spirit--this was what he found himself wanting to
take with him in a way that he could never let go, no matter how far
away from her he might be.
“I’m sorry you don’t think you can,” he said at last, gently. “Do you
know that I never even asked it of you before?”
“Do you ask it now? You only said--‘are you coming?’”
“Didn’t that tell the story? I don’t see how I can quite--bear it--if
you don’t.”
“Then--I will. But I shall sit very far back, and you may not even see
me.”
“I shall see you--if you are there at all.”
He had to hurry away then. There was no time to lose if he would do
half the things that must be done that day. But long afterward in dark
and dreadful scenes, the very antitheses of this one, he could close
his eyes and see the little old garden, with its rows of pink and white
and deep rose hollyhocks against the vine-covered wall, and see Jane
standing in the bright sunlight. He must always remember, too, what it
cost him to stand there beside her, and watch her, and know that, as
with everything he looked upon that day, it might be for the last time.
It had taken every particle of will he had to leave her. Fortunate for
him that that will had had a long schooling in doing what it must, not
what it would!
Ten o’clock--and Red at the vestry door. Within that door a strange
Red, grave and quiet, facing a circle of surprised and deeply
interested men, wondering within themselves how it had ever come about.
A dignified candidate was this, who answered questions, as Black had
bidden him, in his own abrupt and original way, and more than once
startled his questioners not a little. It was at least three times
that Black had to use all the tact and discretion at his disposal to
prevent a clash of arms when it came to some technicality which to some
man’s mind was an important one. But in the end they were satisfied.
Not one of them but knew that if Dr. Redfield Pepper Burns had come to
the point where he was willing to call the old Stone Church his own, it
could only be because some deep antagonism had given way--and that, of
itself, was enough to commend him to them. Such a power as Red was in
the whole community, he could be in the church, if he would. And now
that he would, they must let him in, if they were not fools. And fools
they were not--and some of them were of those whose knowledge is not
wholly of earth, because it has been taught of heaven. So they accepted
Red, as well they might, though he was as far from being a saint as
any one of themselves, nor ever would be one, while he remained below
the stars. The Church Militant is no place for saints, only for human
beings who would keep one another company on a difficult road--and the
company of One who went before and knows all the hardships--and the
glories--of the way.
Eleven o’clock, and Black in his pulpit. He faced a congregation which
filled every nook and cranny of the large audience room, and stretched
away into the distance in rooms beyond opened for the emergency. News
travels fast, and this news had gone like lightning about the town,
for a very good reason. Black had summoned only two of his young men,
despatching them to the hills to go from house to house there. But
these two, before they went, had done a little despatching on their own
initiative, with the result to be expected. It was a great hour, and
too great honour could not be done.
As he rose to speak Black’s heart was very full. Jane was there--he
knew, because he had deliberately watched both doors until he had seen
her come in. And she was not far away in a back seat, as she had said
she would be. Instead, she had permitted an eager young usher, in
search of a place in the already full church, to lead her away down to
the very front, though at one side and almost behind a tall pillar. He
had seen her slip into this pew, evidently asking to change places with
a child who had the pillar seat, one well screened from the rest of the
congregation. Once Black had seen her safely in this place, so near
him, he breathed more deeply. He could forget everything now, except
this, his last chance, with that molten metal he had been making ready
for this hour.
“_And He, bearing His cross, went forth into a place called the place
of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha._”
What happens, in the hour when a man gives himself to a task like this;
when all that he is, or ever hopes to be, he lays upon the altar of
his purpose? Human he may be, and weak, utterly inadequate, as far as
his own power goes, to do the thing he longs to do. And yet--well,
many a man knows what it is to feel his spirit suddenly strengthen
with the hour of need, to feel pour into it something intangible yet
absolutely real and definite--and Divine--to know himself able to
take the minds and hearts and wills of men into his two human hands
and mould them in spite of themselves. And this, as he had hoped and
prayed upon his knees, was what happened to Robert Black this last
morning of his ministry to these people. He could not have asked for a
greater gift--no, not if by putting out his hand he could have taken
Jane’s hand and led her away with him. For that hour, at least, as he
had wished, the man was lost in the priest; he was consecrated, heart
and soul, to his task. How should those before him resist him--the
messenger who spoke to them with the tongue of inspiration? For so he
spoke.
Christ upon the battle-field--that was his theme. Of itself it was a
moving theme; as he made use of it it became a glorious one. Those who
listened seemed almost to see a manly, compassionate Figure moving
among His young soldiers, living in the trenches with them, facing
the fight with them, enduring the long night with them, lifting their
hearts, speaking to their spirits--inhabiting the place of the skull as
they inhabited it--and when the bullet or the bit of shrapnel had gone
home, saying “_I am with you, be not afraid._”
Who shall describe the preaching of a great sermon? The pen has not
been made which may do more than sketch the various outlines of either
experience--that of preacher or that of listener, when God thus speaks
to human hearts through human lips. Reporter’s flying pencil may take
down the burning words themselves without an error; only the shadow of
the mountain falls upon the plane of his notebook. Preacher may only
say: “He spoke through me to-day--somehow I know it”; listener may
only think: “I heard what I never heard before, or may again.” Only
He who inspired the message may know all that it was or half that it
accomplished. So it has always been, and so it will ever be--on earth.
The sermon ended; the communion service began. None went away, as
ordinarily some were accustomed to do; it was if a spell had been
cast upon the audience, it remained so motionless. Only when, at the
very first, a tall figure with a flaming red head came forward at
the beckoning of Black, did other heads crane themselves to see. The
impossible had happened--no doubt of that. It couldn’t be; but yes, it
_was_ Doctor Burns who was marching down the aisle, to stand facing
Black beside the Table on which were set forth the Bread and Wine.