Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

Did Black know this? Unquestionably he did. He knew also that Red was in his audience this morning, and Jane Ray, and Nan Lockhart, and Fanny Fitch, and many another, and that every last one of them was listening as almost never before. How could they help but hear, when he was saying to them that which challenged their attention as he was challenging it now?

This was in February, nineteen seventeen. Diplomatic relations with Germany had been severed; America was on the brink of war. One tremendous question was engaging the whole country: was it America’s duty to go into war? Was it her necessity? Was it—and here a few voices were rising loud and clear—was it not only her necessity and her duty—was it her privilege?

No doubt where Robert Black stood. It was America’s privilege, the acceptance of which had been already too long postponed. In no uncertain terms he made his conviction clear. The blood baptism which was purifying the souls of other countries must be ours as well, or never again could we be clean. To save our souls—to save our souls—that was his plea!

“Oh, I wish,” he cried out suddenly toward the end, “I wish I had the dramatic power to set the thing before you so that you might see it as you see a convincing play upon a stage. Never a human drama like this one—and we—are sitting in the boxes! Bathed and clean clothed and gloved—gloved—we are sitting in the boxes and looking on—and applauding now and then—as loudly as we may, wearing gloves! And over there—their hands are torn and bleeding with wounds—while we delay—and delay—and delay!”

Down in the pew before him Cary Ray suddenly clenched his fists. His arms had been folded—his hands were gloved. Gloved hands could clench then! Into his brain—now afire with Black’s own fire, as it had been more than once before now as the two talked war together—but never as now—never as now—there sprang an idea, glowing with life. His writer’s instinct leaped at it, turned it inside out and back again, saw it through to its ultimate effort—and never once lost track of Black’s closing words, or missed a phrase of the brief prayer that followed, a prayer that seemed to rise visibly from the altar, so burning were the words of it. Cary rose from his seat, a man illumined with a purpose.

Up the aisle he felt Red’s hand upon his arm. Those orders to the usher not to call the red-headed doctor out for anything but an emergency had been regularly in force of late. Astonishingly often was the once absentee now able to make connections with his pew, at least in time for the sermon. To his friend Macauley, who now and then let loose jeering comments upon the subject of his change of ways, he was frank to admit that it did make a difference in the drawing power of the church whether the man in the pulpit could aim only soft and futile blows, or whether he could hit straight and fast and hard. “And whether,” Red added once, bluntly, “you happen to know that he practises precisely what he preaches.”

In Cary’s ear Red now said incisively: “What are you betting that sermon will cost him half his congregation?”

Cary turned, his dark eyes afire. “If it does, we’ll fill it up with vagrants like me. My lord, that was hot stuff! And this is the first time I’ve heard him—more fool I. Why didn’t you let a fellow know?”

Red laughed rather ruefully. “Cary,” he said, “it’s astonishing how we do go on entertaining angels unawares. But when we get one with a flaming sword, like this one, we’re just as liable to cut and run as to stay by and get our own hands on a hilt somewhere.”

“I’ve got mine on one, I promise you,” murmured Cary. His one idea now was to reach home and lay his hand upon it. If, to him, his fountain pen was the trustiest sword in his arsenal, let none disparage that mighty weapon. In his hands, if those hands remained steady, it might in time do some slashing through obstacles.