IN HIS NAME
Morning, and the London streets, with Westminster lifting its stately
heights above them. Jane had been quite sure that Black meant to take
her there; somehow there seemed no place where they could so much want
to go. Miss Stoughton had told her that all through the war the great
Abbey, like St. Paul’s, had been thronged with the people who had gone,
on week days as on the Sabbath, to pray, as the new war-time phrasing
had it, “for those serving upon land and sea and in the air.” And
now, early as they had left the little house almost under the Abbey’s
shadow, they found the streets filled with those who like themselves
were pressing toward the place where since the eleventh of November the
nation’s gratitude for victory was being voiced in each prayer and song
which rose from those sombre walls.
So presently Jane found herself kneeling beside her companion, in this
place of places which stood for the very heart of England. More than
once on former visits to London she had entered at those doors, but
then it had been only as a sightseer. Now, it was as a worshipper that
she had come. Everything in her life was changed, since those former
visits, and she herself was more changed than all.
It was in the midst of a great prayer, one not read from the printed
page but proceeding straight from the heart of one of Westminster’s
best-loved administrants, that Jane felt a hand come upon hers. Fingers
touched the fastening of her glove, making known a wish. She drew off
the glove, and the bare hands clasped and so remained throughout the
whole period of kneeling through this and other prayers. Strangers
were all about, pressed close in the rows of straight-backed chairs
which were set even more thickly this day than there had ever been
need before, yet Jane Ray and Robert Black were almost as much alone
in the midst of the throng as they could have been anywhere. It seemed
to Jane, as that warm, firm hand held hers, that life flowed to her
from it, so vital was the sense of union. Though not a word had as yet
been said, the touch of this man’s hand seemed all but to speak aloud
to her of the love that was only waiting the hour for its expression.
The promise of that clasp was to her only a shade less binding than the
word that he should afterward speak.
When the service had ended and they were upon the street again, Black
did not lead her home. Instead he took her slowly about and about the
place until the crowds had left it. Then he said, with a gesture toward
the nave:
“Shall we go back? There will still be people about, but there’s room
for all. I know a corner where I’m sure we can be quite alone. Somehow,
Jane--I want it to be there. Don’t you?”
She looked up, met such a glance as told her that the hour had come,
and bent her head in assent.
“Church walls never meant so much to me as now,” he said, very low,
as they entered, “now, when the Church has come into her own as never
before. What does it mean when the people crowd like that into her
doors? What did it mean when all those soldiers, as you told me,
crowded into that war-ruined cathedral? Why, it must mean that the
instinct to go where the Name of God is most deeply associated with
every stone and window is something which is in every man who has ever
heard song and prayer ascend from such a place. He can’t do without
it--he can’t do without it.... And no more can we--_now_.”
He said no more, while he led her down the great nave, nearly deserted.
People lingered here and there in famous corners, beside distinguished
name on statue or tablet, but as Black had said, there was room for
all in that vast space. And presently they had come to a spot behind a
stone column where they were in sight of none, and all were far away.
Black took Jane’s hand in his again, and himself drew off the glove.
“Jane,” he said, with that in his low tone which spoke his feeling, “it
seemed to me that I must have our first prayer together in this place.
I came to Westminster and this very spot, when our regiment was in
London, more than a year ago. I knelt here, all alone, and asked God,
as I had never asked before, that He would make Himself real to you. He
has done it, as you have told me, and I wanted to bring you here and
thank Him, on my knees. Because now, we can work together--all the rest
of our lives--in His Name. Is it so--Jane?”
She could not look up. Great sobbing breaths caught her unawares and
shook her from head to foot. She felt his arm come about her, felt his
hand press her face against his shoulder, and there, for a few minutes,
she cried her heart out. He held her silently, and with such a tender
strength that it seemed to her that she had come into some wonderful
refuge, such as she had never dreamed of. All the tension, all the
weariness, all the heart-wrenching sights and sounds of the last year,
had come back to her in one overwhelming flood at his words, as they
had come many times before. But never, at such times, could she let
go; always she had had to hold fast to her courage and her will, lest
giving way weaken her for the pressing, unremitting tasks yet to be
done. In the old, ruined cathedral a month before, she had had all she
could do to keep control and not suffer a very hysteria of reaction,
such as, alone among those hundreds of men, would have done both
herself and them a harm. But now--she knew for the first time in her
independent, resourceful life, what it might mean to lean upon an arm
stronger than her own, and to feel, as she was momently feeling more
sustainingly, that another life was tied so closely to her own that
neither sorrow nor joy could ever shake her again that it should not
shake that life too.
By and by the storm passed. No longer did she want to weep--a great
peace came upon her. She stood still within the right arm which held
her--the uninjured arm--she didn’t know that he could not lift that
left arm yet nor use it beyond slight effort. Now, at last, he spoke.
“Will you kneel with me, here? No one will see--and if they
did--everyone prays now.”
So they knelt, and Robert Black poured out his heart in a few
low-spoken words which, if she had still been unbelieving that they
could be heard, must have stirred her to the depths. As it was,
convinced past all power of sceptic argument to shake, Jane’s own soul
spoke with his to the God who had brought her where she was.
With the last words his hand came again upon her cheek and turned her
face gently toward his. His lips sealed his betrothal to her with a
reverent passion of pledging which told her, more plainly than any
words could have done, that that life of his was now fully hers. It
was the life of no pale saint, she well knew, but that of a man whose
blood was red and swift-flowing, whose pulses beat as fast and humanly
as her own. But he had chosen to devote that virile life to service
in the Church, with the same ardour with which, during these months
just past, he had given of his best to help defeat the enemies of that
Church and all for which it stands. No fear for her now that service
with him back on the old home grounds would be dull or tame or weak;
it would call for the best she had to give. And she would give it, oh,
but she would give it! She knew, at last, that no task of his in that
service could seem to her uncongenial, if to him it was worth while.
As they walked slowly back up the long, quiet nave, it was as from some
high rite. At the door Robert Black turned and looked back into the dim
distance of the great vaulted interior. Then he looked down into Jane’s
face.
“It’s done,” he said, with a smile which lighted his eyes into altars
upon which burned holy fires of love and joy, “and never can be undone.
And when you’re home again--oh, please promise me--we’ll have--the rest
of it--without any delay at all?”
“I promise.” The smile she gave him back, he thought, was the most
beautiful thing he had ever seen.
At the door of the little house under the shadow of the great Abbey,
Miss Stoughton met them with a message, sent in haste from Dr. John
Leaver, forwarding Black’s orders to sail that night.
“But if,” he said, standing with Jane at the last moment, alone with
her in the small drawing room, “by any strange happening this should be
all that we ever had of each other in this life, we have had--it all!
Jane, we have had it all--all the best of it!”
“Yes!” she breathed it. “But”--she lifted her face and whispered it--“I
want--a life-time to say that in!”
“So do I--bless you!--and we shall have it--somehow I’m very sure. God
keep you safe, my Best Beloved, I know He will!”
Then he went away, limping a very little with his cane, but walking
very erect and looking as if he had won all the wars of all the worlds.
He could hardly have been so happy if he had.