What Miss Sarah had so pointedly put straight to Dick himself, his retiring congregation was saying in more or less abbreviated and moderated form to one another. “I can’t see it,” said one; “it’s looking too far ahead to talk like that. Besides, it sounds like peace propaganda to me, and I won’t stand for that, even from the Domine, much as I have always believed in him.”
“It’s pacifist talk,” said another. “Makes me feel as if we’d been harboring a serpent in our bosom through all these years. It might be all very well to talk about a peaceful walk to Berlin if the Germans were not Germans, but they are Germans, the people who have stood for all these atrocities, who have been militarized out of all semblance to human beings, they must have their lesson. It’s a church for a church, a cottage for a cottage, I think.”
“He’s all wrong,” said another. “Get them with their backs to the wall and they would fight like hell, for they’ve got it into their heads that our men would do every fearful thing to their women and children that they have done to ours.”
The air was thick with disapproval that day in Sabinsport of the Rev. Richard Ingraham; and suspicion gathered and gathered as the day went on. Could it be that they had been mistaken, that he really was at heart a pacifist?
The day was to come—and it was not far distant—when all these indignant patriots were to do their best to make amends for their resentment.
Under the great burst of joyous relief which the news of the signing of the armistice caused in Sabinsport, her anger at Dick began to soften. As the days went on and they actually saw at least the spirit of his dream coming true—their own boys crossing into the enemy’s country in orderly fashion, going about the enemy’s streets in self-control, even holding the enemy’s children on their knees and joining in their Christmas trees and Christmas carols—a kind of wonder seized them. It was a prophecy they had listened to. Even Miss Sarah Kenton was one day to come to Dick and express her appreciation of his sermon, as frankly as she had just expressed her disapproval.
But all that was for a later day. There is no question at all but that, at the moment, Richard Ingraham had deeply outraged Sabinsport spirit of righteous indignation against the Germans which he had done more than any other man to awaken.
He went back to his study in the rectory after his interview with Miss Sarah and sat for a long time, considering what he had done. “Good Lord!” he said, “I certainly have put my foot in it. They really think I am a pacifist,” and he threw back his head and laughed aloud. But it was a rueful laugh. Disapproval was a new experience for the young man. He had had nothing but affectionate approval from the day that Sabinsport first made his acquaintance. He could not remember a time in all these years of speaking to them that his sermons had not met with kindly appreciation, and now? Why, they had walked out of that church as if they thought him a German spy.
And yet, underneath his chagrin, there was a certain exaltation. “She has a mind of her own, Sabinsport, and she is not afraid to show it. You can trust her to take care of her own, even against her own. But what a climb I will have to get back!” And then quickly the thought came, “I wonder if Nancy will feel as they do?” That gave him a cold heart, almost a physical sickness. He could bear everything but to have Nancy look at him as the people had when he first came out of his rhapsody and realized their faces.
He put it through bravely. At the evening service there was the smallest number of people that he ever remembered to have seen, but he talked exactly as he had planned.