“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.