Blecker shook his head and turned off, waiting for Mrs. Sheppard. She was on the sidewalk, laying down the law to the chaplain, who, with his gilt-banded cap, looked amazingly like a footman. The lady's tones had the Kentucky, loud, mellow ring; her foot tapped, and her nervous fingers emphasized the words against her palm.
"Ill-bred," thought the young man; but he bowed, smiling suavely. "If I have been derelict in duty, Madam, I will be judged by a Higher Power."
"But it's my way, young Sir, to go to the root of the matter, when I see things rotting,—be it a potato-field or a church. We're plain-tongued in my State. And I think the Higher Power needs a mouth-piece just now."
And something nobler of mien than good-breeding gave to Sarah Sheppard's earnest, pursy little figure meaning just then, before which the flimsy student of the Thirty-Nine Articles stood silent.
"I'm an old woman, young man; you're a boy, and the white cravat about your neck gives me no more respect for you than the bit of down on your chin, so long as you are unworthy to wear either. We Virginians and Kentuckians may be shelled up yet in our old-fogy notions; it's likely, as you say. We don't understand the rights of man, maybe, or know just where Humanity has got to in its progress. But we've a grip on the old-fashioned Christianity, and we mean to make it new again. And when I see hundreds of young, penniless preachers, and old, placeless preachers, shoving into the army for the fat salaries, drinking, card-playing with the men, preaching murder instead of Christ's gospel of peace, I'll speak, though I am a woman. I'll call them the Devil's servants instead of the Lord's, and his best and helpfullest servants, too, nowadays. If there's a time when a man's soul cries out to get a clear sight of God, it's when he's standing up for what he thinks right, with his face to the foe, and his country behind him. And it's not the droning, slovenly prayers nor hashed-up political speeches of such men as you, that will show Him to them. Oh, my son!" putting her hand on the young man's arm, her voice unsteady, choking a minute, "I wish you'd be earnest, a peace-teacher like your Master. It's no wonder the men complain of the Federal chaplains as shams and humbugs. I don't know how it is on the other side. I've a son there,—Harry. I'd like to think he'd hear some live words of great truth before he goes into battle. Not vapid gabbling over the stale, worn-out cant, nor abuse of the enemy. When he's lying there, the blood coming from his heart on the sod, life won't be stale to him, nor death, nor the helping blood of the cross. And for his enemy, when he lies dead there, my Harry, would God love his soul better because it came to Him filled with hate of his brother?"
She was half talking to herself now, and the young man drew his coat-sleeve out of her hold and slipped away. Afterwards he said that old lady was half-Secesh, because she had a son in the Rebel army; but I think her words left some meaning in his brain other than that.
She met Blecker, her face redder, her eyebrows blacker than usual.
"You up and out, Doctor Blecker? Very well! You'll pay for it in fever to-morrow. But every young man is wiser in his own conceit, to-day, than seven men that can render a reason. It was not so in my day. Young people knew their age. I never sat down before my mother without permission granted, nor had an opinion of my own."
She stood silent a moment, cooling.
"Pha, pha! I'm a foolish old body. Fretting and fuming to no purpose, likely. There's Pratt, now, laughing, down the street. 'Mother, if you're going to have one of your brigazoos with that young parson, I'm off,' he says. He says,—'You're not in your own country, where the Shelbys rule the roast.' What if I'm not, Doctor Blecker? Truth's truth. I'm tired of cant, whether it belongs to the New-England new age of reason, their Humanity and Fourierism and Broad-Church and Free-Love, or what not, or our own Southern hard-bit, tight-reined men's creeds. Not God's,—driving men headlong into one pit, all but a penned-up dozen. I'm going back of all churches to the words of Jesus. There's my platform. But you said you wanted to speak with me. What's your trouble?"