NO 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. Do _you_ believe the things that he does?
_You_ could 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--what _is_ it?”
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, she said 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 motioned
to 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. _That_ was 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 to _Our Minister_!”
There was a stir, a murmur throughout the big audience. Handkerchiefs
were held suspended in mid-air while everybody 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. She had 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 now with 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 his talents 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 greatest
appreciation 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--“some of 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 he had
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
between them, 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 one sort 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.