Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

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: