But although to many the great carnage of blood which was convulsing Europe was not real, the fact of war brooded over us like a great black cloud. In a sense we did not realize it, everything was so quiet and peaceful; but in another we did. It was in the background of all our lives, it colored all our thoughts.
Although I had given up all hope of getting any answers to the questions which troubled me either at Church or Chapel, I still went almost regularly. I could not understand how, but I had a feeling that it was here I should solve the problems which faced me.
For the first two or three weeks after war was declared there was a slight improvement in the congregations, and then things seemed to settle down to their normal condition again. And yet there was a difference, a subtle, indefinable difference. In a way I could not explain, it colored, as I have already said, all our thoughts and feelings. The services both at the Church and the Chapel were conducted just as they had been, except that some new prayers had been added to the Church liturgy, while the preacher at the Chapel generally made some mention of the war in some part of the service.
It seemed to me, too, that the people were thinking more than usual. Questions were being asked, which they had never thought of asking when I first came to the village. They did not go very deep, but they were suggestive of the new forces which were being realized. The change was so slight that a casual observer might not have noticed it; but it was there. I could not help thinking of the old Biblical story I had read at school, about the cloud the prophet saw which at first was no bigger than a man's hand, but which presently overspread the whole sky.
One day, when I went into the village, a woman stopped me rather angrily.
"Look 'ere, Mr. Erskine, I 'ave got somethin' to say to 'ee."
"What is it?" I asked.
"Well, a few weeks agone my boy Jim enlisted as a sojer 'cause of what you said at the meetin'."
"Very sensible of Jim," I replied.
"I ded'n like it at the time," said the woman.