GOD'S WILL
Dick Welford had played directly into the hands of his enemy. When
Socola called at the Barton home to pay his respects to Miss Jennie and
wish them health and happiness and success in their new and dangerous
enterprise, he found the girl in a receptive mood. The accusation of
interest had stimulated her to her first effort to entertain the
self-poised and gentlemanly foreigner.
He turned to Jennie with a winning appeal in his modulated voice:
"Will you do me a very great favor, Miss Barton?"
"If I can--certainly," was the quick answer.
"I wish to meet your distinguished father. He is a great Southern
leader. I have been commissioned by the Sardinian Ministry to cultivate
the acquaintance of the leaders of the Confederacy. I am to make a
report direct to the Court of King Emmanuel on the prospects of the
South."
Jennie rose with a smile.
"With pleasure. I'll call father at once."
Barton was delighted at the announcement.
"Invite him to spend a week with us at Fairview," Jennie suggested.
"Good idea--we'll show him what Southern hospitality means!"
Burton grasped Socola's outstretched hand with enthusiasm.
"Permit me," he began in his grand way, "to extend you a welcome to the
South. Your King is interested in our movement. It's natural. Europe
must reckon with us from the first. Cotton is the real King. We are
going to build on this staple an industrial empire whose influence will
dominate the world. The sooner the political rulers realize this the
better."
Socola bowed.
"I quite agree with you, Senator Barton. His Majesty King Victor
Emmanuel has great plans for the future. He is profoundly interested in
your movement. He does not believe that the map of Italy has yet been
fixed. It will be quite easy to convince his brilliant, open mind that
the boundaries of this country may be readjusted--"
"I shall be delighted to show you every courtesy within my power, sir,"
Barton responded. "You must go South with us to-morrow and spend a week
at Fairview, our country estate. You must meet my grand old father and
my mother and see the curse of slavery at its worst!"
Barton laughed heartily and slipped his arm persuasively about the
graceful shoulders of his guest.
"I hadn't thought of being so honored, I assure you--"
He paused and looked at Jennie with a timid sort of appeal.
"Come with us--we'll be delighted to have you--"
"I'll enjoy it, I'm sure," he said hesitatingly. "We will reach
Montgomery in time for the meeting of the Convention of Seceding
States?"
"Certainly," Barton replied. "I'm already elected a delegate from my
State. Her secession is but a question of days."
Socola's white, even teeth gleamed in a happy smile.
"I'll go with pleasure, Senator. You leave to-morrow?"
"The ten-twenty train for the South. You'll join our party, of course?"
"Of course."
With a graceful bow he hurried home to complete the final preparations
for his departure. He walked with quick, strong step. And yet as he
approached the door of the little house in the humbler quarter of the
city his gait unconsciously slowed down.
He dreaded this last struggle with his mother. But it must come. He
entered the modestly furnished sitting room and looked at her calm,
sweet face with a sudden sinking. She would be absolutely alone in the
world. And yet no harm could befall her. She was the friend of every
human being who knew her. It was the agony of this parting he dreaded
and the loneliness that would torture her in his absence.
He spoke with forced cheerfulness.
"Well, mater, it's all settled. I leave at ten-twenty to-morrow
morning."
She rose and placed her hands on his shoulders. The tears blinded her.
"How little I thought when I taught your boyish lips to speak the
musical tongue of Italy I was preparing this bitter hour for my soul! I
begged your father to resign his consulship at Genoa and brought you
home to teach you the great lesson--to love your country and reverence
your country's God. And since your father's death the dream of my heart
has been to see you a minister, teaching and uplifting the people into a
higher and nobler life--"
"That is my aim, mater dear. I am consecrating body, mind and soul to
the task now of saving the Union, an inheritance priceless and glorious
to millions yet unborn. I'm going to break the chains that bind slaves.
I'm going to break the brutal and cruel power of the Southern Tyranny
that has been strangling the nation for forty years!"
His eyes flashed with the fire of fanatical enthusiasm.
He slipped his arm about his mother's slender waist, drew her to the
window and pointed to the unfinished dome of the white, majestic
capitol.
"See, mater dear, the sun is bursting through the clouds now and
lighting with splendor the marble columns. Last night when the speeches
were done and the crowds gone I stood an hour and studied the flawless
symmetry of those magnificent wings and over it all the great solemn
dome with its myriad gleaming eyes far up in the sky--and I wondered if
God meant nothing big or significant to humanity when he breathed the
dream of that poem in marble into the souls of our people! I can't
believe it, dear. I stood and prayed while I dreamed. I saw in the
ragged scaffolding and the big ugly crane swinging from its place in the
sky the symbol of our crude beginnings--our ragged past. And then the
snow-white vision of the finished building, the most majestic monument
ever reared on earth to Freedom and her cause--and I saw the glory of a
new Democracy rising from the blood and agony of the past to be the hope
and inspiration of the world!
"You hate this masquerade--this battle name I've chosen. Forget this,
dear, and see the vision your God has given to me. You've prayed that I
might be His minister. And so I am--and so I shall be when danger calls;
you dislike this repulsive mission on which I'm entering. Just now it's
the _one_ and only thing a brave man can do for his country. Forget that
I'm a spy and remember that I'm fitted for a divine service. I speak two
languages beside my own. Our people don't study languages. Few men of my
culture and endowment will do this dangerous and disagreeable work. I
rise on wings at the thought of it!"
The mother's spirit caught at last the divine spark from the soul of the
young enthusiast. Her eyes were wide and shining without tears when she
slipped both arms about his neck and spoke with deep tenderness.
"You have fully counted the cost, my son?"
"Yes."
"The lying, the cheating, the false pretenses, the assumed name, the
trusting hearts you must betray, the men you must kill alone, sometimes
to save your own life and serve your country's?"
"It's war, mater dear. I hate its cruelty and its wrongs. I'll do my
best in these early days to make it impossible. But if it comes, I'll
play the game with my life in my hands, and if I had a hundred lives I'd
give them all to my country--my only regret is that I have but one--"
"How strange the ways of God!" the mother broke in. "He planted this
love in your soul. He taught it to me and I to you and now it ends in
darkness and blood and death--"
"But out of it, dear, must come the greater plan. You believe in
God--you must believe this, or else the Devil rules the universe, and
there is no God."
The mother drew the young lips down and kissed them tenderly.
"God's will be done, my Boy--it's the bitterness of death to me--but I
say it!"